Fieschi’s Infernal Machine

Abstract

BETWEEN 1834 AND 1839, THE FAILURES OF the republican movement, on the streets and in the courtroom, left something of a vacuum. It was filled, briefly and clumsily, by the assassins. The would-be regicides, though mostly republican in sentiment, were on the margins of republican groups, or even outside them altogether; the personal motives that drove them to violence were merely shaped by political unrest, without being caused by it. Republicans despised the actors (with one striking exception) but, in the absence of a major underground society, hesitantly applauded their acts.