Word: orsinis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Although some trails are still incomplete, Sugarbush night life is off to a running start, and New York restaurateur Ormando Orsini has already opened a nightspot for skiing roues...
With Eggs. For the rest of his life, Felice Orsini was one of Europe's most wanted men, trailing from country to country, spying, mounting fantastic plots and making sporadic forays into his homeland. In London, where he was rapturously welcomed, Orsini let his vanity drive him to his last, most hare-brained exploit-an attempt on the life of France's Emperor Napoleon III. It was a crazy choice, because the Emperor had declared himself ready to fight for the cause of Italian independence. But, Orsini argued, if only Napoleon were removed, all other thrones in Europe...
...Orsini's bombs were custom made for him by a respectable British firm, paid for by a sympathetic British crackpot. By the beginning of 1858, Orsini and three Italian fellow conspirators had arrived in Paris with their cargo of "what looked like a clutch of monstrous birds' eggs, spiny and fantastic." On the appointed night Orsini and his friends joined the crowd in the Rue Lepelletier, down which Louis Napoleon and Empress Eugénie were about to drive to the opera...
...Felice Orsini went to the guillotine in March 1858. crying "Viva l'Italia! Viva la Francia!" To show his love of Italy, Louis Napoleon would have liked to pardon him; instead, thirteen months later, he led an army of 200,000 over the Alps and defeated the Austrians at Solferino and Magenta. It was the beginning of the end of foreign rule in Italy. The new Kingdom of Italy, established seven years later, would have to decide whether Felice Orsini was a hero or an inept killer, or both. As to his bomb-throwing predilections, he might have answered...
...ancient Orsini family (TIME, Feb. 10), credited with having produced 18 saints, five Popes and 40 cardinals...