Orsini bomb

Development

The bomb had a unique design for its time, lacking a fuse or timer. Numerous pins around it were filled with mercury fulminate; contact on any angle with an object would immediately trigger detonation. Felice Orsini, an Italian exile living in England, designed the bomb, while English gunmaker Joseph Taylor made the casing. The bomb was designed and created in Birmingham, England, and tested by Taylor in Sheffield and Devon.

Historic use

Taylor supplied the bomb to Orsini after running his own tests, then smuggled the devices into France under the guise of gas machinery. He later said he believed the weapon was a legitimate explosive of an original design. The bomb was built for an 1858 attempt on Napoleon III’s life, and the idea may have come from an earlier 1800 plot against Napoleon I using an improvised explosive. Orsini made twelve bombs for the job.

He and three others planned to hurl four bombs at the emperor as he stepped from his carriage, but every throw missed. Still, the blasts killed ten people and injured 157. One conspirator later wrote: “My grenade contained 4 pounds of powder.

All the conspirators had their respective posts previously assigned to them. Four hand-grenades were to be thrown by Gomez, myself, Orsini, and Pieri, respectively. … throwing my grenade right under the fore part of the carriage, and dropping myself among some dead horses and struggling men, I watched the effects of the explosion. The horses and the driver were instantly killed.”

Anarchists later reused the Orsini bomb in several plots when dynamite was unavailable. It was also the weapon used by anarchist Santiago Salvador during a performance of Rossini’s William Tell at Barcelona’s Liceu Theater in 1893. That attack killed twenty and wounded thirty, though only one bomb went off. An unexploded example ended up at the Barcelona City History Museum and was loaned to the Van Gogh Museum in 2007 for an exhibit on late 19th-century Barcelona.

By coincidence, Napoleon III and his wife had been on their way to see the same opera when Orsini struck more than thirty-five years earlier.

Did You Know?

• Coincidentally, Napoleon III and his wife were on their way to see the same opera when Orsini made the attempt on their lives over 35 years earlier.
• The design is reminiscent of modern impact fused grenades, such as the Soviet RGO hand grenades.