Plot of The Rue Saint-Nicaise - Interpretation of Napoleon's Dreaming

Interpretation of Napoleon's Dreaming

Sigmund Freud believed that Napoleon was “an extremely sound sleeper” and wrote about this dream. Freud thought that Napoleon had harboured a “fantasy” of the Tagliamento River battle, which was revived by the explosion. To deal with this intruding physical stimulus, the sleeping Napoleon “wove” the sound of the explosion into his dream before waking up. Still dreaming that he was being bombarded by the Austrians, Napoleon woke up crying "Nous sommes minés!" ("We have been mined!"). Freud thought that Napoleon “at last started up with a cry ‘We are undermined!’ ... the First Consul wove the noise of an exploding bomb into a battle dream before he woke up from it ...”. Freud believed that Napoleon’s dream was an “alarm-clock dream” that weaves external stimuli into its structure in order to maintain the dreamer’s sleep and prevent him from being disturbed by external noises. “Napoleon could sleep on – with a conviction that was trying to disturb him was only a dream-memory of the thunder of the guns at Arcole .”

In fact, Napoleon had been dreaming of his Tagliamento River battle in March 1797 rather than of his battle at Arcola in November 1796. The river may have unconsciously symbolized his feelings and the horses his ambitions. Napoleon did not sleep after the explosion: “Bonaparte decided to go ahead immediately, without losing one minute in which the enemy could take advantage to kill him.” Freud admitted that he had two different sources for this dream, Garnier and another source, which “did not agree in their account of it,” but he did not name or cite his other source.