4. Although eventually succumbing to assassination in 1881, Alexander II of Russia survived several prior attempts made against his life during his twenty-year long reign
Alexander II (b. 1818) reigned as Emperor of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 1855 until his death at the hands of an assassin in 1881. Responsible for the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, garnering him the title “Alexander the Liberator”, the Russian monarch was the subject of sustained attempts upon his life. Starting with an attempt on April 4, 1866, an event which triggered a noticeable hardening of the Russian leader’s political positions, Alexander, along with his two sons and Napoleon III, were also attacked the following year at the World’s Fair. Spared by the misfiring of Polish immigrant Antoni Berezowski’s modified double-barrelled pistol, the bullet instead struck an accompanying horse.
Almost killed again on the morning of April 20, 1879, Alexander Soloviev, a thirty-three-year-old revolutionary, opened fire upon the Emperor as he walked across the Square of the Guards Staff in St. Petersburg. Firing five shots and giving chase, the Russian monarch fled his assailant, dodging the oncoming bullets. In December of the same year, the revolutionary organization “People’s Will” bombed the railway to Moscow, narrowly missing Alexander’s train. People’s Will was also responsible for the bombing of the dining room of the Winter Palace on February 5, 1880, killing eleven and wounding thirty, but missing the Emperor who was delayed attending the meal.