The Infernal Machine, Rue Saint Nicaise, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "MACHINE INFERNALE." in open capitals above the image. A Paris street at night is lit by an explosion bursting in flame and smoke at the right. At the center a closed carriage drawn by white horses drives on, Napoleon visible at its window and a coachman on the box, with mounted escorts in plumed fur caps around it. At the lower left women run from the blast, one crouching on the cobbles, and a barrel and a wheel lie at the lower right.

The caption below the image reads: "Le 25 décembre 1800, à huit heures du soir, une effroyable détonation se fit entendre dans la rue S.t Nicaise, au moment, où Napoléon se rendait à l'opéra, il fut redevable de la vie à l'audace, résultat de l'ivresse de son cocher." In English: On 25 December 1800, at eight in the evening, a frightful explosion was heard in the rue Saint-Nicaise just as Napoleon was on his way to the opera; he owed his life to the daring of his coachman, the result of drink.

Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard. Its title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from new documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon at Saint Helena, with plates lithographed by the Belgian artist Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after the first painters of the French school. This plate comes from the first volume, which runs from Brienne to the camp of Boulogne.

The attack took place on the evening of 24 December 1800 (the caption gives the 25th), as the First Consul drove to the Opéra. Royalist conspirators had left a cart carrying a barrel of gunpowder in the narrow rue Saint-Nicaise; it exploded seconds after the carriage passed, killing and wounding bystanders. Bonaparte was unhurt. The plot was traced to agents of the Chouan leader Georges Cadoudal.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.