The Orsini affair comprised the diplomatic, political and legal consequences of the "Orsini attempt" (French: attentat d'Orsini): the attempt made on 14 January 1858 by Felice Orsini, with other Italian nationalists and backed by English radicals, to assassinate Napoleon III in Paris.[1]
In the United Kingdom the Palmerston government fell within a month; and some related trials of radicals ended without convictions, as British public opinion reacted against French pressure.
After the assassination attempt, Cavour in Italy was able to make France his ally during the Risorgimento.
Background in the Risorgimento
The attack carried out by Orsini and his group was justified by its supporters in terms of the unification of Italy, a cause that Napoleon III was perceived as blocking. In the middle of the nineteenth century, this nationalist movement in favour of a united Italy, something that had not existed since Late Antiquity, drew widespread support from intellectuals, and was also championed by violent extremists. The expatriate Italian leader Giuseppe Mazzini worked a network of activists and fundraisers from London.
Policy on asylum in the UK
British politics and diplomacy of this period assumed that political exiles and refugees should be given asylum. In the period 1823 (de facto) to the Aliens Act 1905, the United Kingdom did not attempt to control or register immigrants. The Orsini affair was a severe test of the consequences of this policy.[2] Besides Mazzini, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, Lajos Kossuth and Alexander Herzen had moved to London: and Napoleon III suspected Mazzini and Ledru-Rollin of being behind a series of attempts by Italians to kill him, of which Orsini's was only the most recent. The existing British law on conspiracy made it a misdemeanour, and there was no extradition.[3]
Felice Orsini
Context in British radicalism
In the year before the attack in Paris, Orsini had been a popular lecturer, touring in England and Scotland. The other main members of Orsini's group in the plot were both Italian and then in England, where they were known as language teachers. Giovanni Andrea Pieri (also Pierri, sometimes called Giuseppe) was reportedly living in Birmingham from 1853; Carlo de Rudio was in Nottingham.[4] Birmingham was to be a key location for the plot.
Orsini had spent periods in England, and had made numerous contacts. The immediate context of the "affair" was, however, his falling-out with the group often known as the 'Muswell Hill brigade', around William Henry Ashurst. This occurred at some time during the middle of 1856. Orsini was a paid agent of Mazzini, but there was a terminal quarrel over some remarks he had made about Emilie Hawkes, a daughter of Ashurst, which were read by James Stansfeld, married to another of the daughters.[5] According to Felix Moscheles, Stansfeld was opening Mazzini's letters by arrangement while Mazzini was out of the country; Orsini challenged Stansfeld to a duel.[6] By 1857 Orsini was well known to have broken away and no longer claimed to be a "Mazzinian".[7]
Allsop arranged for the manufacture of "Orsini bombs" with a firm in Birmingham, and others tested them out in the countryside.[9] Furthermore, Allsop provided Orsini with an old British passport under which to travel to France.[10]
Assassination attempt
Orsini's attempt to kill Napoleon III: the second bomb explodes under the carriage
On the evening of 14 January 1858, as Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie were on their way to the Salle Le Peletier theatre, to see Rossini's William Tell, Orsini and his accomplices threw three bombs at their carriage. The first bomb landed among the horsemen in front of the carriage. The second bomb wounded the animals and smashed the carriage glass. The third bomb landed under the carriage and seriously wounded a policeman who was hurrying to protect the occupants.
The attack killed eight people and a horse, the Emperor's military escort taking the brunt. Estimates of the wounded ran to 150.[11] The construction of the carriage protected the passengers: Orsini himself was wounded.[12] He tended his wounds and returned to his lodgings, where police found him the next day.
Arrest and trial of Orsini
Contemporary representation of Orsini on the scaffold.
Orsini fled the scene of the assassination attempt, but was arrested shortly afterwards. He stood trial and was condemned to die by the guillotine. He left a detailed testament, and also addressed three letters to Napoleon III. He was executed on 13 March 1858,[13] with Pieri who had also planned to take part in the attack but had been arrested, at La Roquette. Camillo di Rudio, another assassin, was convicted but later had his death sentence commuted to hard labour; later in the USA he took part in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, serving under Custer. Antonio Gomez, who was Orsini's servant, was also sentenced to hard labour.[14][15] One of Orsini's letters to Napoleon was read out in court by his counsel; the second was published officially after his death.[16]
Walter Laqueur's opinion is that Orsini's plot was successful in political terms. This was because Napoleon III was in any case not unwilling to aid Italian unification.[20] In July 1858 he met Cavour secretly at Plombières-les-Bains. This diplomatic move and resulting agreement presaged the Second War of Italian Independence of the following year, in which France was allied to the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Habsburg Empire, at that time in control of northern Italy.[21] In August 1858 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Cherbourg, being welcomed by the Emperor and Empress, in a public show of reconciliation.[22]
British domestic politics
The affair was exploited by Benjamin Disraeli, who was closely briefed by Ralph Anstruther Earle in the Paris embassy, against the Whig government of Lord Palmerston. Palmerston introduced into Parliament a Conspiracy to Murder Bill; but the measure was unpopular. Thomas Milner Gibson introduced a motion of censure on the government, and it had a majority of 19; it took the form of an amendment to the second reading of the Bill, mentioning that the French official despatch of 20 January had not been answered, and the Speaker John Evelyn Denison allowed it, over the advice of Viscount Eversley, the previous Speaker, that the resolution was not relevant to the bill. Palmerston's government therefore fell, and he resigned on 19 February 1858.[23][24][25]
The year 1858 saw the creation of the National and Constitutional Defence Association, a pressure group for a volunteer military rifle corps, designed to resist invasion. Its secretary was Alfred Bate Richards.[26]Hans Busk joined the Victoria Rifles that year, and campaigned vigorously for the expansion of volunteer forces.[27] The Volunteer Force took form in 1859.
Prosecutions in the British courts
The incoming administration of Lord Derby continued, however, the prosecutions Palmerston had set in motion. Allsop had escaped after the event to America, as Hodge did to Piedmont;[28] Holyoake was not suspected.
Simon Bernard was an expatriate French follower of Charles Fourier. It was alleged against him that he had introduced two of the plotters, Pierri and de Rudio.[15] He was arrested, on a charge of conspiracy; but with the change of government he was put on trial for involvement in one of the murders in Paris. Because the death had been abroad, a Special Commission was required.[33]
Edwin James swayed the jury against the run of evidence, securing Bernard's acquittal. 1859 engraving.
Truelove was prosecuted by the British government, on a charge of criminal libel,[33] and causing a public outcry; included in the case was Stanislaus Tchorzewski, on the grounds that he had published a defence of Bernard by the group led by Félix Pyat.[36][37][38] Adams, along with the Tyneside radical Joseph Cowen who had welcomed Orsini to Stella Hall, and William James Linton, had associated with Orsini when he had visited the North of England. Given that Cowan destroyed correspondence, the involvement of this group in illegal acts is now considered difficult to gauge.[39] Possibly included in some way was the art dealer Charles Augustus Howell, based in Darlington, who was thought at the time to be implicated. He left the country, returning only in 1865.[40]
After the verdict in the Bernard case, the government dropped these prosecutions.[33] Mill commented on the Truelove trial in Ch. 2 of On Liberty (1859).[36]
Landor libel case
Walter Savage Landor was known to be a supporter of Orsini. This fact was used against him in a civil case for libel. Shortly afterwards he left England for Italy, for the last time.[41]
Felice Orsini was an Italian revolutionary and leader of the Carbonari who tried to assassinate Napoleon III, Emperor of the French.
Arthur Brooke was an English poet who wrote and created various works including The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), considered to be William Shakespeare's chief source for his tragedy Romeo and Juliet.
Sir James Stansfeld, was a British Radical and Liberal politician and social reformer who served as Under-Secretary of State for India (1866), Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1869–71) and President of the Poor Law Board (1871) before being appointed the first President of the Local Government Board.
Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester was an English art collector, diplomat and Secretary of State.
The Morning Star was a radical pro-peace London daily newspaper started by Richard Cobden and John Bright in March 1856. It had substantial support from Joseph Sturge.
The Surrey Institution was an organisation devoted to scientific, literary and musical education and research, based in London. It was founded by private subscription in 1807, taking the Royal Institution, founded in 1799, as a model. The Institution lasted only until 1823, when it was dissolved.
Dr John Epps was an English physician, phrenologist and homeopath. He was also a political activist, known as a champion of radical causes on which he preached, lectured and wrote in periodicals.
John Neville, 3rd Baron Latimer was an English peer. His third wife was Catherine Parr, later queen of England.
Justice of the Common Pleas was a puisne judicial position within the Court of Common Pleas of England and Wales, under the Chief Justice. The Common Pleas was the primary court of common law within England and Wales, dealing with "common" pleas. It was created out of the common law jurisdiction of the Exchequer of Pleas, with splits forming during the 1190s and the division becoming formal by the beginning of the 13th century. The court became a key part of the Westminster courts, along with the Exchequer of Pleas and the Court of King's Bench, but with the Writ of Quominus and the Statute of Westminster, both tried to extend their jurisdiction into the realm of common pleas. As a result, the courts jockeyed for power. In 1828 Henry Brougham, a Member of Parliament, complained in Parliament that as long as there were three courts unevenness was inevitable, saying that "It is not in the power of the courts, even if all were monopolies and other restrictions done away, to distribute business equally, as long as suitors are left free to choose their own tribunal", and that there would always be a favourite court, which would therefore attract the best lawyers and judges and entrench its position. The outcome was the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873, under which all the central courts were made part of a single Supreme Court of Judicature. Eventually the government created a High Court of Justice under Lord Coleridge by an Order in Council of 16 December 1880. At this point, the Common Pleas formally ceased to exist.
Thomas Allsop was an English stockbroker and author. Allsop is commonly described as the favourite disciple of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He also took part in violent radical politics.
William Henry Ashurst (1792–1855) was an English solicitor, deeply involved in the radical politics of his time.
English county histories, in other words historical and topographical works concerned with individual ancient counties of England, were produced by antiquarians from the late 16th century onwards. The content was variable: most focused on recording the ownership of estates and the descent of lordships of manors, thus the genealogies of county families, heraldry and other antiquarian material. In the introduction to one typical early work of this style, The Antiquities of Warwickshire published in 1656, the author William Dugdale writes:
I offer unto you my noble countriemen, as the most proper persons to whom it can be presented wherein you will see very much of your worthy ancestors, to whose memory I have erected it as a monumentall pillar and to shew in what honour they lived in those flourishing ages past. In this kind, or not much different, have divers persons in forrein parts very learnedly written; some whereof I have noted in my preface: and I could wish that there were more that would adventure in the like manner for the rest of the counties of this nation, considering how acceptable those are, which others have already performed
Simon François Bernard was a French surgeon and republican revolutionary. He is best known for his involvement in the 1858 plot of Felice Orsini to assassinate Napoleon III.
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Matilda Ashurst Biggs was a member of the notable 19th-century British family of reformers, the Ashursts. Their circle of radicals was nicknamed the "Muswell Hill Brigade" after the family homestead. Alongside her family, Matilda Biggs promoted progressive domestic and foreign causes, especially working for women's equality in Britain and Italian unification.
Benjamin Booth (1732–1806) was an English director of the East India Company and art collector.
Arthur Clutton-Brock was an English essayist, critic and journalist.
↑ C. T. McIntire, England against the Papacy, 1858–1861: tories, liberals, and the overthrow of papal temporal power during the Italian Risorgimento (1983), p. 14; Internet Archive.
↑ William H. C. Smith, The Bonapartes: the history of a dynasty (2007), p. 167; Google Books.
↑ Steven L. Jacobs, Maven in Blue Jeans: a festschrift in honor of Zev Garber (2009), p. 377; Google Books.
↑ Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, Jane Rendall, Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867 (2000), p. 81; Google Books.
↑ Margot C. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics 1848–1874 (2004), p. 184;Google Books.
↑ Joan Allen, Joseph Cowen and Popular Radicalism on Tyneside 1829–1900 (2007), p. 41 and p. 45.
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