On Christmas Eve 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, was very near being killed in an attack, as were his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais and her daughter Hortense.
Christmas Eve 1800. Or 3 Nivôse Year IX in the revolutionary calendar. That day, Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, went to the Paris Opera. In the company of his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais, her daughter Hortense, his sister Caroline Bonaparte and Generals Berthier and Lannes, the one who would become Emperor Napoleon I a few years later will listen to an oratorio by Haydn. .
But he almost never attended this spectacle and, more serious still, misses his incredible destiny. Because, on rue Saint-Nicaise, a “car bomb” was waiting for him. Led by an old mare, it was loaded with stones of all kinds and two barrels of black powder.
Joséphine was late because of her outfit
“Everything was played out within a few meters”, underlines David Chanteranne, in his book “The twelve deaths of Napoleon”, recently published by “Passés / Composés” editions. “The speed of the convoy led by the personal driver of the Head of State, the well-named Caesar, who had probably drunk too much and wanted to be zealous not to be late, adding to the rain and the errors committed by the accomplices, had made the attempt fail, ”explains the historian, editor-in-chief of“ Napoleon I, Revue du Souvenir napoléonien ”and conservation officer of the Napoleon museum in Brienne-le-Château. And to specify that Josephine and her daughter also escaped death, because the first one was late in “choosing her toilet”. So much so that their coach did not follow Bonaparte’s very closely, unlike usual.
To reread: When Napoleon adorned the women of his life with sumptuous tiaras
If the attack “of unheard-of violence” did not affect either its main target, or its relatives, the explosion of the car, between the rue Saint-Honoré and the Carrousel, nevertheless made about twenty victims and fifty wounded. . “Among these deaths, we found an innocent young girl of fourteen, Marianne Peusol, who, without knowing it, had held the trapped cart. His atrocious end moved public opinion. Bonaparte’s first words were unequivocal: “What a horror! To destroy so many people, because we want to get rid of a single man!”, Says the author. An investigation was immediately launched, “with modern and efficient means, undoubtedly one of the first instructions of this magnitude,” he points out, adding: “An investigation and a way of doing things that future followers would not deny. of the forensic science… ”. The result was the execution under the guillotine of ten Jacobins and the sending of 130 suspects to prison on the islands of Ré and Oléron or at Fort de Joux for some, exile in Guyana or the Seychelles for some. others.
* “The twelve deaths of Napoleon”, by David Chanteranne, “Passés / Composés” editions, December 2020, 256 pages, 21 euros. The historian revisits the life of Napoleon Bonaparte with as a common thread the twelve known or unknown moments when he escaped death. It deals in particular with an epidemic of plague in Egypt, wounds during battles, attacks or even a failed suicide.
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