8. Napoleon Bonaparte was the target of dozens of assassination attempts, with the closest coming within mere seconds of blowing him up on Christmas Eve in 1800
Napoléon Bonaparte, born Napoleone di Buonaparte in 1769, was a French military officer who rose to prominence during the French Revolutionary Wars, becoming First Consul in 1799 and Emperor of the French in 1804. Launching a series of wars known collectively as the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon plunged Europe into conflict for more than a decade until he was defeated in 1814. Briefly deposed, Napoleon returned from exile during the Hundred Days before suffering his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Throughout his reign, Napoleon was the victim of between twenty to thirty assassination attempts, the most famous of which occurred on December 24, 1800.
Known as the “Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise”, royalists suspected to having been secretly financed by the British sought to eliminate Napoleon en route to the opera in Paris. Placing a barrel full of shrapnel and gunpowder at an intersection Napoleon was to cross, the dictator’s carriage was traveling too quickly and the conspirators mistook the timing. Detonating after the carriage had passed, the explosion killed a dozen bystanders and wounded many more, in addition to almost killing Napoleon’s wife and pregnant sister who were traveling in a separate carriage behind the First Consul’s.