
Giuseppe Marco Fieschi (13 December 1790-19 February 1836) was a Corsican thief and ardent nationalist who, on 28 July 1835, attempted to assassinate King Louis Philippe I by use of the "infernal machine", a battery of 25 linked rifle barrels. The attack killed 18 and wounded 22, but King Louis Philippe survived; Fieschi was guillotined in 1836.
Biography[]
Giuseppe Marco Fieschi was born in Bocognano, Corsica, France on 13 December 1790, and he spent his childhood and adolescence as a shepherd before serving as a French Army sergeant during the Napoleonic Wars. In September 1815, he was among the 1,000 volunteers who joined Joachim Murat in his failed attempt to regain the throne of Naples, and he escaped execution by fleeing to France; he had Murat's arms tattooed on his chest. In 1816, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for the theft of a steer, and he was released in 1826. He lived in Lyon until the July Revolution, after which he moved to Paris. He fradulently obtained a job and pension from the government, but he was sacked after it was discovered that he had forged his paperwork. In 1831, he and his republican neighbor devised a plot to assassinate King Louis Philippe I with the "infernal machine", a battery of 25 linked rifle barrels. On 28 July 1835, the two men decided to assassinate King Louis Philippe at the annual review of the National Guard, commemorating the July Revolution. The machine was fired from a shuttered window on the third floor at 50 Boulevard du Temple beside the Jardin Turc, causing a smoky explosion; a group of National Guards proceeded to storm the building and arrest Fieschi. The attack left 22 wounded and 18 dead, including a 12-year-old girl and Marshal Edouard Mortier, who survived several battlefields across Europe and the Defense of France, only to be murdered on a Paris boulevard. A grand funeral was held for the attack's victims on 5 August 1835, and the government responded by closing down 30 republican newspapers and magazines, making insults against the King and the principle of government punishable by deportation, censoring prints and plays, strengthening the repressive powers of the courts of law, and making juries anonymous. Fieschi was executed by guillotine on 19 February 1836.