The Plot
On 26 Frimaire Year IX of the French Republic (December 17, 1800) the chouans Carbon, Limoëlan and Saint-Régeant bought a cart and horse from a Parisian grain dealer named Lamballe. Carbon said he was a peddler who had bought a supply of brown sugar which he needed to convey to Laval in Brittany to barter for cloth and wished to buy Lamballe’s cart and old mare for that purpose. Lamballe sold him the cart and mare for two hundred francs. Carbon and his friends drove it to 19, Rue Paradis, near Saint-Lazare, where they had rented a shed. There they spent five days hooping a large wine cask to the cart with ten strong iron rings. The idea was to fill the cask with gunpowder, make a machine infernale and explode it near Napoleon as he drove to a public place like the Opera.
On the first of Nivôse (December 22) Saint-Régeant drove to the place du Carrousel looking for a placement for the machine infernale. He chose a spot in the Rue Saint-Nicaise, north of the Tuileries Palace, toward the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, where Napoleon had massacred the royalist rebels in 1795, “more or less abreast of what is now the Place du Théâtre Français. The Rue de la Loi, (today the Rue de Richelieu), which led to the opera, was almost a continuation of it.” Saint-Régeant decided that this was the perfect spot. “They would position the cart carrying the barrel in the Rue St.-Nicaise, toward the Rue St.-Honoré, some 20 meters from the Place du Carrousel ... One of them would stand watch before the Hôtel de Longueville, at the far side of the square. Thus he would see the carriage when it left the Tuileries, and would be able to signal to the person, who, with a long fuse, would ignite the bomb”.
Read more about this topic: Plot Of The Rue Saint-Nicaise
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