On December 24, 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte was assassinated on Rue Saint-Nicaise. Twenty-two people died and fifty-six were injured, but Bonaparte himself emerged unharmed.
Public opinion at the time generally held that the royalists were responsible. Everyone who had participated in the beheading of Louis XVI was a "regicide," including the Jacobins. Since Napoleon had once joined the Jacobins, he too became one of the "regicides."
But he had not personally done the deed. Compared with the other extremists, the exiled Louis XVIII still held some hopes for him. The circumstances of an impoverished noble were rarely pleasant. Louis XVIII had once been desperately short of money, and Napoleon had given him an allowance. Later, Louis XVIII wrote to the "regicide," hoping he would welcome him back, but Napoleon refused. By then, some members of the Council of Five Hundred had already become deeply dissatisfied with his special courts.
At the end of the old regime, the supreme courts had lost their impartiality after the Maupeou Reforms and become obedient tools of the king. Napoleon's special courts were much the same in nature.
He was unwilling to be bound by any principles, let alone the constitution. The new notables supported the establishment of a strong government, but not one ruled tyrannically by force. Debate in the Council of Five Hundred enraged Napoleon. "There are a dozen or fifteen metaphysicians in the Council who are fit only to be thrown into the water. They are lice on my clothes. I am a soldier, a son of the French Revolution. I will never tolerate being insulted as if I were a king."
Soon afterward, the assassination attempt took place.
He insisted on going to the theater to watch a performance despite having just survived an attempt on his life. On the third day,