Napoleon’s Police

Portrait_NorvinsI have just finished researching some of the various assassination attempts on Napoleon. The most significant was the detonation of the Infernal Machine. The conspiracy to blow Napoleon up using thius bomb is a project which I have dubbed Killing Napoleon, and it is being published in early 2019. You can read the blurb here.

In fact, the project will bring together two attempts on Napoleon’s life. One, hatched by Jacobins, was foiled in October 1800. The second, organised by royalists, and involving the bomb attempt, was much more dangerous and almost killed Napoleon in December of the same year.

One of the key sources will be the records of the French police, both the secret and everyday kind.

My only concern, shared by my wallet, is that the material on Napoleonic police is vast, this bibliography details over 4,000 works:

https://criminocorpus.org/en/bibliography/themes/13161/

I’ve started my own work with a brief biography of Dubois, the Prefect of Police charged with preventing and then solving the crime of the Infernal Machine. Some of the other (less significant) tasks bothering him in late 1800 are given in the Law of the Trouser.