The Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise was an assassination attempt on First Consul of France Napoleon Bonaparte that took place on the Rue Saint-Nicaise in Paris, France on 24 December 1800.
Planning to overthrow the French Consulate and restore the Bourbon monarchy, the Chouans Pierre Robinault de Saint-Régeant, Pierre Picot de Limoëlan, Georges Cadoudal, Jean-Baptiste Coster, Joyaux d'Assas, Jerome Petion de Villeneuve, and La Haye-Saint-Hilaire conspired to assassinate Napoleon as he and his wife Josephine de Beauharnais took a carriage to an opera performance. They created the "infernal machine," a barrel filled with gunpowder and bullets that would be set off by a blunderbuss triggered from a distance by a string. On Christmas Eve, the day that Napoleon and his wife planned to watch a Joseph Haydn opera, Saint-Regeant hired the 14-year-old girl Marianne Peusol to block the Rue Saint-Nicaise with a horse and cart. Napoleon's carriage passed the Rue Saint-Nicaise and entered the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore at the last minute, as police minister Joseph Fouche wanted to vary Napoleon's routes as a precaution, forcing Saint-Regeant to light the fuse and flee as the leading grenadiers in Napoleon's guard rode past him. The ensuing explosion killed Peusol and other innocent bystanders, but the unharmed Napoleon insisted on continuing to the opera, where the audience cheere dupon learning of his escape. The police initially arrested extreme-left Jacobins who were allegedly responsible for the attempt, but Fouche blamed the Chouans. Napoleon ignored Fouche and exiled 130 Jacobins in January 1801; he also had an innocent chemist and a Jacobin pamphleteer executed. Saint-Regeant was executed on 20 April 1801, while Limoëlan lived until 1826.