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Blogger: Amber Lemus |
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Napoleon Bonaparte Public Domain |
It was July of 1807, and the French army under Napoleon Bonaparte was celebrating their victory and the Treaties of Tilsit. Napoleon's Chief of Staff, Louis-Alexandre Berthier, had the idea to host a great rabbit hunt to mark the occasion. He had property near Paris that was perfect for the celebration and the hunt. It was only lacking one thing. Rabbits. And he would need a great number of them for such a grand hunt. He wanted it to be equal to the victory they had experienced and thrill the emperor and his entourage. That was no problem for Berthier, however. He precured one thousand rabbits to be released the morning of the hunt. All was well.
Napoleon and his military officers began the morning with a lavish breakfast at Berthier's property. When they were finished, they made their way down to the park to begin the rabbit hunt. Everything was going exactly as planned.
Then they released the rabbits.
Berthier expected the rabbits to scatter into hiding places so they could be hunted. To behave as rabbits were known to behave. But this particular group of rabbits, the exact number unknown but a horde by all accounts, instead of scattering, began to cluster together. Then, they charged. Running toward the hunters and Emperor Napoleon.
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European Rabbit JM Ligero Loarte, CC BY 3.0 |
Initially, the men laughed at the sight. But when the swarm descended upon them, concern began to grow. Berthier thought quickly and assembled a band of coachmen with whips and surrounded the emperor to ward off the swarm of rabbits from him. At first, that seemed to work, and the group of men started to laugh again. Then the unthinkable happened. General Paul Charles François Adrien Henri Dieudonné Thiébault recounted what happened next in his memoir.
They were looking on the incident as a delay - comical, do doubt, but well over - when, by a wheel in three bodies to the right and left, the intrepid rabbits turned the Emperor's flank, attacked him frantically in the rear, refused to quit their hold, piled themselves up between his legs till they made him stagger, and forced the conqueror of conquerors, fairly exhausted, to retreat and leave them in possession of the field.
The rabbits climbed up Napoleon's legs and clung to the sleeves of his jacket. Eventually, the emperor retreated to his carriage, but the rabbits still pursued him. Some historians have described the onslaught as demonstrating “a finer understanding of Napoleonic strategy than most of his generals,”
In addition to the comedic value and irony of this story, there is a deeper moral. It turns out that the rabbits Berthier had acquired were domesticated. Since they hadn't been fed, they swarmed the humans thinking that they would feed them. The moral of the story is that even bunnies can overpower the strongest of men when they are both hungry and united.
Two-time winner of the Christian Indie Award for historical fiction, Amber Lemus inspires hearts through enthralling tales She has a passion for travel, history, books and her Savior. This combination results in what her readers call "historical fiction at its finest".
She lives near the Ozarks in her "casita" with her prince charming. Between enjoying life as a boy mom, and spinning stories out of soap bubbles, Amber loves to connect with readers and hang out on Goodreads with other bookish peoples.
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