Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise

The plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise, also known as the Machine infernale plot, was an assassination attempt on the life of the First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, in Paris on 24 December 1800. It followed the conspiration des poignards of 10 October 1800, and was one of many Royalist and Catholic plots.

The name of the Machine Infernale, the "infernal device", was in reference to an episode during the sixteenth-century revolt against Spanish rule in Flanders. In 1585, during the Siege of Antwerp by the Spaniards, an Italian engineer in Spanish service had made an explosive device from a barrel bound with iron hoops, filled with gunpowder, flammable materials and bullets, and set off by a sawed-off shotgun triggered from a distance by a string. The Italian engineer called it la macchina infernale.

The machine infernale attempt on Napoleon’s life was planned by seven royalist Breton chouans.

Cadoudal had charged Limoëlan and Saint-Régeant with the task of taking Napoleon’s life. They in turn enlisted an older Chouan named François-Joseph Carbon (1756–1801), “a stocky man with a fair beard and a scar on his brow,” who had fought in the wars of the Vendée under the rebel leader Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont.

On 26 Frimaire Year IX of the French Republic (December 17, 1800) the chouans Carbon, Limoëlan and Saint-Régeant bought a cart and horse from a Parisian grain dealer named Lamballe. Carbon said he was a peddler who would hold a mare for that purpose. Lamballe sold him the cart and mare for two hundred francs. Carbon and his friends drove it to 19, Rue Paradis (), near Saint-Lazare, where they had rented a shed. There they spent 10 days hooping a large wine cask to the cart with ten strong iron rings. The idea was to fill the cask with gunpowder, make a machine infernale and explode it near Napoleon as he drove to a public place like the Opera.

On the first of Nivôse (December 22) Saint-Régeant drove to the Place du Carrousel looking for a placement for the machine infernale. He chose a spot in the Rue Saint-Nicaise (), north of the Tuileries Palace, toward the rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, where Napoleon had defeated the royalist revolt in 1795, “more or less abreast of what is now the Place du Théâtre Français. The rue de la Loi, (today the Rue de Richelieu), which led to the opera, was almost a continuation of it.” Saint-Régeant decided to place the barrel in the rue St.-Nicaise, toward the rue St.-Honoré, some 20 meters from the Place du Carrousel. One of them would stand watch before the Hôtel de Longueville, at the far side of the square. Thus he would see the carriage when it left the Tuileries, and would be able to signal to the person who, with a long fuse, would ignite the bomb”.

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