The assassination attempt occurred on 14th January 1858, when the imperial couple was going to the then-existing Paris Opera House, Salle Le Peletier. The assassination was carried out by Felice Orsini, who was a member of the organization of the Carbonari (charcoal makers), a secret revolutionary association.
Orsini, hoping that the Emperor’s death would spark a revolution in France, along with three accomplices, threw bombs at the carriage on which Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie were traveling to the Paris Opera House.
Dozens of people were killed at the time, and the emperor, who was the target of the bombing, was not even injured. Orsini designed a bomb filled with fulminate mercury with a horrific, for the time, power of destruction, later called the Orsini bomb.
