Napoleon and the battle of rabbits
It was not at Waterloo, but Napoleon’s most humiliating defeat came at the hands, well, the paws of a fearsome band of bunny rabbits.
The bizarre moment in European history happened in July of 1807, after Napoleon signed the Treaties of Tilsit, officially marking the end of the war between the French Empire and Imperial Russia. To celebrate the occasion, he proposed a rabbit hunt with his men.
Napoleon put his chief of staff, Alexandre Berthier, in charge of organising the event. Berthier went a tad overboard with the bunny corralling and collected 3,000 rabbits!On the day of the hunt, Berthier’s men placed the cages all along the edges of a massive field.
When Napoleon and his guests arrived, the long-ears were released and the hunt was on, as the hunters galloped into the field to catch their quarry. But then something bizarre happened: The rabbits didn’t scamper away in fear. Quite the opposite — they bounded toward Napoleon and his hunting party.
Napoleon and his buddies soon found themselves bombarded with a barrage of fluffy bunnies.
Initially, the men laughed at the utter absurdity of it all. But as the onslaught continued, their feelings of mirth and astonishment turned into genuine concern and fear.
The emperor and his men tried in vain to repel the onslaught, but the critters kept coming and coming and he and his men were absurdly outnumbered.Knowing it was a battle he could not win, Napoleon bid a hasty adieu, withdrawing to what he assumed would be the safety of his carriage, but the rabbit horde divided into two wings and headed for the coach.
A few of the rabbits actually leaped into his carriage. The attack ended only when the coach rolled away, with Napoleon.So, why did the rabbits attack? Blame it on Berthier. Rather than hunting down and trapping wild hares, he took the easy way out, ordering his men to procure tame rabbits raised by farmers.
Problem was, unlike wild rabbits that would instinctively scurry away, the domesticated farm rabbits didn’t fear people. They took one look at Napoleon and his posse and assumed they were going to provide them with food, just like the farmers who raised them. When crispy carrots were not forthcoming, the critters got a little cranky.
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