[1] On September 10, 1898, Lucheni used a tapered file to fatally stab Empress Elisabeth of Austria during her visit to Geneva.

Elisabeth and her lady-in-waiting Countess Sztáray had departed their hotel on Lake Geneva to ride a paddle steamer to Montreux.

[3] Badly wounded, she nevertheless continued walking, with the support of two other people, 100 yards to board the departing steamer.

[2] The steamer returned to shore after Countess Sztáray first noticed Elisabeth's bleeding, whereupon the Empress was carried back to the hotel on a makeshift stretcher.

He was furious to find that capital punishment had been abolished in Geneva, and wrote a letter demanding that he be tried in another canton, such that he could be martyred.