Anton Berezowski (Russian: Антон Иосифович Березовский) was the son of an impoverished Polish nobleman from the Volyn region of north west Ukraine.

[1] In 1867 when Tsar Alexander II arrived to Paris for the World's fair, Berezowski conceived the idea to kill him to liberate his native land.

His double-barrelled pistol broke off at the shot, and the bullet, having deviated, wounded a horse of an accompanying Russian.

In court on July 15 Berezovsky declared that his purpose in shooting at the tsar was to release his native land; he only expressed one regret, that it occurred in Poland-friendly France.

Berezovsky avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to lifelong hard labor in New Caledonia on the island of Grand Terre.