Plot of The Rue Saint-Nicaise - The Plotters

The Plotters

The machine infernale attempt on Napoleon’s life was planned by seven royalist Breton chouans.

• Pierre Robinault de Saint-Régeant (1768–1801): a supporter of Louis XVIII, Saint-Régeant had tried to stir a revolt in western France the previous year, and had publicly torn up Napoleon’s offer of amnesty to the vendéens.
• Pierre Picot de Limoëlan (1768–1826): the gentleman son of a guillotined royalist nobleman.
• Georges Cadoudal (1771–1804): the giant Chouannerie leader.
• Jean-Baptiste Coster (1771–1804): one of Cadoudal’s ablest lieutenants, known as Saint-Victor.
• The other three plotters were the noblemen Joyaux d’Assas, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, and La Haye-Saint-Hilaire.

Cadoudal had charged Limoëlan and Saint-Régeant with the task of taking Napoleon’s life. They in turn enlisted an older chouan named François-Joseph Carbon (1756–1801), “a stocky man with a fair beard and a scar on his brow,” who had fought in the wars of the Vendée under the rebel leader Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont.