In Paris, a young Polish exile makes a futile assassination attempt on Russian Tsar Alexander II. | House Divided

Tsar Alexander II of Russia was visiting Paris during the International Exhibition when he was subjected to one of the various assassination attempts he suffered during his twenty year reign. Antoni Berezowski, a Polish emigré, fired a pistol around five o’clock in the evening at the carriage in which he was travelling with the French Emperor Napoleon III through the Bois de Boulogne after a military review at the Longchamp racecourse.  The pistol misfired, wounding one of the horses.  Berozowski was captured and spent life in prison in the French Pacific possession of New Caledonia.  Alexander II survived five other attacks but eventually fell to assassins, suffering horrific injuries in a bombing of his carriage in St. Petersburg on March 13, 1881.  (By John Osborne)