from the Vendeans, he announced there would be peace only when the
rebels had submitted. He sent some of his best generals, including Brune,
against them and won a string of military victories. One of the most
important Vendee leaders, the comte de Frotte, surrendered with six
other rebel luminaries, under the impression they had been offered safe
conduct. They were executed at once, possibly because Frotte had
personally insulted the First Consul in a manifesto. But Napoleon himself
was not directly responsible: 'I did not give the order,' he said later, 'but I
cannot claim to be angered by its implementation.' Disheartened by this
act of treachery, dismayed by their run of military failures, and bitter
towards the English, whom they accused of not providing the resources
to make the rebellion in western France a serious threat, the V en deans
signed a truce.
For the rest of 18oo royalist opposition to Napoleon took the form of
conspiracies and assassination plots. There was a plan by one of General
Hanriot's aides to assassinate Napoleon on the road to Malmaison; this
aborted. There was the 'dagger plot' of 10 October 18oo, when Napoleon
was to be stabbed to death with a stiletto in his box at the Opera; but the
ringleaders - the painter Topio-Lebrun, the sculptor Ceracchi and the
adjutant-general Arena - were rounded up and executed before the plot
could be implemented. And there was the most serious assassination
attempt of all: the machine infernale of December 18oo.
On Christmas Eve 18oo Napoleon, Josephine and her family, together
with Caroline Murat, were due to attend the opening of Haydn's Creation
at the Opera. Napoleon was in front in one coach with three of his
generals, while Josephine, her daughter Hortense and Caroline Murat
followed in the second. The royalists had rigged up an 'infernal machine'
- actually a bomb attached to a barrel of gunpowder concealed in a cart -
and timed it to explode at the precise moment Napoleon and his
entourage drove down the rue St Nicaise. Two things thwarted a
cunningly laid plot. The two carriages were supposed to keep close
together, but the women's coach had been delayed when Josephine at the
last moment decided to change a cashmere shawl; meanwhile a drunken
coachman on Napoleon's carriage was driving at speed. A gap opened up
between the two conveyances and it was at that point that the device
exploded, missing both carriages but killing or maiming fifty-two
bystanders and some of the Consul's escort. Napoleon continued to the
Opera as though nothing had happened.
It was not only from royalists that the Consul had to fear plots. The
Jacobins were active too, especially in the Army, where they could count
on the support of generals like Bernadotte, Moreau, Augereau, Lecourbe,