Bismarck survived an assassination attempt with a lot of luck!


On May 7, 1866, the Tübingen student Ferdinand Cohen-Blind ...



...tries on the street "Unter den Linden" in Berlin to kill the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

With the assassination, Cohen-Blind wants to avert the looming war with Austria (and Bavaria), which he sees as a "fratricidal war".

When Bismarck is on his way home from a lecture with King Wilhelm I of Prussia...



... Cohen-Blind picks him up and fires from a small-caliber revolver ...



... that he had previously hidden under his clothes, two shots from behind at Bismarck - both hit!

Bismarck drives around, grasps the situation in a moment, and grabs Cohen-Blind, who can still fire three more shots ...:



What ultimately saves Bismarck is the changing of the guard of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Guards Regiment on foot, which happened to be passing by on the way to the city palace (where Bismarck has just come from).



The rushing soldiers disarm the student and arrest him.

Bismarck continues on his way home on foot - apparently unharmed.

But this is not the case: the doctor who was summoned found that the Chancellor was hit by all five shots fired - and was extremely lucky!

The first three had only grazed him and the last two bullets had ricocheted off Bismarck's ribs and, like the grazing shots, had only caused superficial injuries.

Had Cohen-Blind obtained a larger caliber weapon for the assassination attempt, Bismarck would have been killed for sure!

The assassin is taken to police headquarters for interrogation, where he cuts his carotid artery with a knife at an unnoticed moment and dies shortly after 4 a.m. on May 8th.

His body was later buried without ceremony and at night in the Nikolaifriedhof.

The murder weapon, a six-shot bundle revolver of the Lefaucheux type in 6mm caliber, is exhibited in the Bismarck Museum in Friedrichsruh ...:

Lefaucheux 6mm pinfire muff pistol - hardly an assassin's weapon. Not even adequate to put down a dangerous Hamster

Good thread as always

Phil