At Les Invalides, there was a breastplate that had belonged to a twenty-three-year-old carabinier named François Foveau. He had married just before enlisting in 1815, then took part in the Battle of Waterloo. A solid cannonball struck his breastplate. It could have protected him from an ordinary bullet, but before a solid cannonball it was like paper. There was a hole punched straight through the breastplate. Clearly, François Foveau could not possibly have returned alive to see his newlywed wife after being hit.
On the Longchamp Plain in 1867, Napoleon III and Tsar Alexander II held a grand military review destined to go down in history. The brilliant sunlight and magnificent formations seemed to write another glorious chapter for France. Before the review began, Napoleon III displayed a national treasure—a gleaming breastplate.
Its design was not greatly different from the one François Foveau had worn, nor was it made of gold. The only difference was that it was intact, as though it had been restored. Those who had once followed Napoleon I were filled with emotion, as if reliving their glorious past. The young soldiers, meanwhile, looked resolute. It was like a star whose light had been swallowed by darkness after Waterloo, appearing once more above the Longchamp Plain.
Had a bullet not struck one of the horses pulling the carriage carrying Napoleon III and Alexander II just as the review was about to end, the event would undoubtedly have been a success. This assassination attempt was unlike that against Archduke Ferdinand. In fact, Ferdinand had died only after the second attempt that day. Before he was shot, he had already been attacked with a grenade, yet he had not ended his itinerary because of the attempt on his life.
More than two people in Sarajevo had plotted to assassinate