Rue Saint-Nicaise attack — 24 décembre 1800

A booby-trapped cart exploded as the First Consul was driving to the Opera; he escaped the 'infernal machine' by seconds, while some twenty bystanders were killed. Bonaparte first blamed the Jacobins and deported one hundred and thirty republicans, before Fouché established the guilt of royalist Chouans. The affair justified the hardening of the regime's police apparatus.

The infernal machine

On 3 Nivôse Year IX, 24 December 1800, the First Consul was on his way to the Opera to hear Haydn's Creation. In the Rue Saint-Nicaise a cart loaded with a barrel of powder exploded seconds after his carriage had passed, driven at a gallop by a coachman who had been drinking.

Bonaparte was unhurt; Joséphine, delayed in the following carriage, was too. The blast killed some twenty passers-by, wounded about fifty and tore open the district. Among the dead was the little girl the conspirators had paid to hold the horse's bridle.

Jacobins punished for a royalist plot

Bonaparte immediately blamed the Jacobins, against the advice of Fouché, who suspected the Chouans. Without waiting for the investigation, a senatus-consultum of 5 January 1801 deported a hundred and thirty republicans, most of them unconnected with the affair, to the Seychelles and Guiana; many died there.

Within weeks, however, the police established the guilt of Breton royalists linked to Cadoudal: Saint-Réjant and Carbon were arrested, tried and executed in April 1801. The deportation of the Jacobins was not revoked.

One step closer to heredity

The attack gave a decisive argument to those who argued for transmissible power: if the regime hung on one life, a dynasty was needed. The reasoning would run on to the Life Consulate in 1802, and then to the Empire after the Enghien affair.

It also gave the ministry of police the chance to extend its means: surveillance of foreigners, files, special commissions. State security became a permanent justification.