1. Felice Orsini was born at Meldola in Romagna, then part of the Papal States.
15 Facts About Felice Orsini
1. 2.
Felice Orsini was encouraged to become a priest, but he abandoned that lifestyle and became an ardent liberal, joining the Giovane Italia, a political society founded by Giuseppe Mazzini.
3.
Felice Orsini was elected member of the Roman Constituent Assembly in 1849, and after the fall of the revolutionary republic in Rome, he conspired against the papal autocracy in the interest of the Mazzinian party.
4.
Felice Orsini escaped a few months later using a tiny saw to cut through two grids of bars, climbed out of the window 100 feet above ground and slid down using a rope he had made of bedsheets.
5.
Felice Orsini published The Memoirs and Adventures of Felice Orsini in 1856.
6.
Felice Orsini became convinced that Napoleon III was the chief obstacle to Italian independence and the principal cause of the anti-liberal reaction throughout Europe.
7.
Felice Orsini 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.
8.
Felice Orsini went to Paris in 1857 to conspire against the emperor.
9.
Satisfied, Felice Orsini returned to Paris with the bombs and contacted other conspirators, Giovanni Andrea Pieri, Antonio Gomez and Carlo di Rudio.
10.
Felice Orsini himself was wounded on the right temple and stunned.
11.
Felice Orsini tended his wounds and returned to his lodgings, where police found him the next day.
12.
Felice Orsini addressed another letter to the youth of Italy and condemned political assassination.
13.
Felice Orsini was sentenced to death and went calmly to the guillotine on 13 March 1858.
14.
Felice Orsini became an infantryman and later an officer in the United States Army, and served in the American Civil War.
15.
Felice Orsini served many years in the Army, retiring in the 1890s.