24 December 1800
Napoleon survives bomb plot

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Napoleon survives an assassination attempt when a bomb is thrown at his carriage in Paris. The perpetrators are royalists seeking a restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. However, Napoleon uses the attack as an opportunity to crack down on the Jacobins, radical supporters of the Revolution, who are his only remaining serious opponents in France (see Empire). In the coming years, his creation of the Gendarmerie, a paramilitary police force, to crush banditry and rebel groups in the French countryside will seal his security at home.

'The progress of a physical conspiracy is arrested when the hand that holds the poignard is secured; but a moral conspiracy cannot be put down, sooner or later it will explode like a train of gunpowder.' Napoleon

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