The assassination of August von Kotzebue 1817

One practice that is relatively conspicuous by its absence in the years after the Congress of Vienna is assassination.  A lot of people were killed in these years across a wide swathe of Europe. But the express, targeted elimination of leading actors – kings and Queens, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and leaders of political and religious groups was not something that happened widely, and was not a shared European tradition.   Indeed, assassination was rare – strikingly so across the region, as it had been in the earlier centuries – but as it would not be from the 1880s onward. 

America was a little more modern – there had been an attempt on Aaron Burr in 1807, and then on Andrew Jackson (1835), Lilburn Boggs, the ex Governor of Missouri (1842), Abraham Lincoln (1861) and William H Seward (1865) – and successful attempts on Joseph Smith (Church of the latter day saints 1844) and, of course Lincoln in 1865. 

Europe, was a great deal quieter in this respect:  in Britain, the Prime Minister, Spencer Percival being killed in 1817, and there were attempts on Queen Victoria in 1840 and 1842 – and there was the Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820, although this was kept firmly under the control of the government’s secret agents, and may well not have developed as far as it did without their encouragement. In France, despite the development of some appalling equipment launched at Louis Philippe in 1835 (as in the item The Infernal Machine) and the attempt on Napoleon III in 1858, the only successful assassination was of the Duc de Berry (younger son of the future Charles X) in 1820. In Germany the playwright Alexander Kotzebue was killed in 1817; there was also an attempt on Franz-Joseph I, the Austro-Hungarian Emperor in 1853. In Serbia, a series of clinical killings of opposition leaders occurred in 1815, 1816, 1817, removing Kara-Marko Vasić, Melentije Nikšić and Karađorđe Petrović.  In Italy the Minister of the Papal states, Pellegrino Rossi was killed in 1848; in Greece, in 1831, Ioannis Kapodistrias, first President of Greece was dispatched; and in Russia, Mikhail Miloradovich. military governor of St Petersburg was assassinated in 1825. 

What is clear from this is that assassination was not a widely used tactic in this period. That it became so later, might be in part an issue of technology and its reliability, but ii is much more likely to be a consequence of how people saw their struggle. They wanted to persuade, and to increase the incentives for their opponent to make concessions, but people did not widely approach the issues as ones in which royal heads had to roll; nor did they see the elimination of particular individuals as necessary for the achievement of their ambitions.  The weight of opinion, and the weight of numbers, and the weight of foreign support, were all invoked, but there was not a sense that assassination was an acceptable, let alone optimal route to take.  Those who took it tended to be loners, with particular grievances.  Perhaps only in the Cato Street case and in 1835 in France were there small groups of men prepared to plot the removal of government through assassination.  At this point in history, it is the route less taken.

Of course, in protesting people might identify individuals who they wanted to make sure would hear their message and they might target them - Mill owners in their mills, or landlords on their estates.  And occasionally, people identified particular individuals whom they held responsible for their condition and who might arouse such strong antipathy that their lives were at risk.  But this was often a very local affair.  On the West coast of Ireland in January 1820, a young gentleman of property, Edward Brown, was shot dead as he rode through the country - mistakenly identified as the much hated Clerical Magistrate Rev. O'Rourke, who required military protection for the rest of his stay in Galway.

See Malcolm Chae, 1820 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2013), pp. 60-1.

La 'Machine Infernale'

The "infernal machine" consisted of twenty-five rifle barrels arranged on an inclined plate and bound together by an iron band. These guns were loaded with shot, lead ingots and scrap metal. The device was put into action by Giuseppe Fieschi on July 28, 1835, on the Boulevard du Temple when Fieschi attempted to kill King Louis-Philippe I during a review celebrating the "Three Glorious Days” of 1830. When fired, five of the guns failed; three others exploded, causing Fieschi serious head injuries. The king survived the attack unscathed but nineteen people, including a Marshal of the Empire (Mortier), lost their lives on the spot or in the days that followed. Forty-two other people were injured. Fieschi acted without clear political motives, in contrast to his accomplices Pepin and Morey, who were both Republicans. All three were found guilty of regicide and were guillotined in February 1836. Louis-Philippe was the victim of numerous assassination attempts throughout his reign; the attempt of July 1835 is nevertheless distinctive for its spectacular character and the high number of casualties. The laws of September 1835 signal of the accentuation of the repressive response to the attacks on the regime and the government and in particular to Fieschi’s desperate machine.