1835: The Infernal Machine: Fieschi’s 25-Barrel Assassination Attempt on King Louis Philippe I
On 28 July 1835, Giuseppe Marco Fieschi fired a homemade 25-barrel volley gun, dubbed the ‘infernal machine’, from a third-floor window at 50 Boulevard du Temple in Paris, directly into the convoy of King Louis Philippe I of France. The weapon unleashed around 400 projectiles in a single volley; the king escaped with only a graze to the forehead, but 18 people were killed and 22 more wounded, at least four of whom had limbs amputated.
The gun’s design proved its own undoing: French artillery officers later concluded that if Fieschi had understood ballistics well enough to angle the barrels so they diverged and crossed, he could have killed up to 200 additional people and destroyed the king entirely. Instead, the parallel configuration limited the carnage. Fieschi himself was badly wounded when several barrels burst; he fled but was tracked by a trail of blood and captured shortly after.
