Hello!
I’ve got a pretty short post for all of you today, but this topic was so important - with such far-reaching implications - that I absolutely had to discuss it.
In July of 1807, Napoleon faced the worst defeat of his career. It wasn’t Waterloo. His opponents weren’t the British, Russians, Prussians, or any other nation.
It was against a bunch of fluffy bunnies.
You heard me right: Napoleon lost a “battle” to a horde of rabbits.
Let’s set the scene:
It’s July of 1807, and Napoleon is hot off of a critical victory: the signing of the Treaties of Tilsit, ending the war between France and Russia. Napoleon, now one of the most powerful men in Europe, decided to celebrate the treaty with a rabbit hunt. No idea why hunting rabbits was the pastime of choice, but I digress. Napoleon’s chief of staff, Louis-Alexandre Berthier, went and bought approximately a few hundred to 3,000 domesticated bunnies from a farmer, and released them into a field. Napoleon and company expected the rabbits to try and flee.
Nope.
The rabbits immediately began to swarm the party, performing a perfect Napoleon-style flanking maneuver: they divided into two and went in from the sides. One general described the bunnies as having “a finer understanding of Napoleonic strategy than most of his generals.” The attack was initially comical but became terrifying. Men screamed as the bunnies nibbled their buttons & boots and climbed on them, and one French general described how “the intrepid rabbits turned the Emperor [Napoleon]’s flank, attacked him frantically in the rear, refused to quit their hold, piled themselves up between his legs till they made him stagger.” The sheer magnitude of the swarm made Napoleon unable to organize and return fire, forcing him to retreat to his coach. The bunnies, in true Napoleonic fashion, did not let up. Multiple made it into Napoleon’s carriage (which were promptly tossed out the window), and the assault continued until a humiliated Napoleon fled the scene.
So, why on Earth did those rabbits suddenly become excellent military strategists Turns out, they were just hungry. They hadn’t been fed yet, and, being domesticated, weren’t scared of humans. They instead thought the humans were there to feed them, and the attack was in fact a pillaging raid for food morsels.
Sources are unclear whether or not Napoleon ever recovered from this massive, world-altering defeat.
One last fact that I find hilarious: since Napoleon only ever fought one battle against rabbits, this means that he had a vastly lower victory rate against bunnies, 0%, than any other enemy he ever faced.
I suppose there could be a lesson to this story, like “even a mouse can bring down an elephant,” for me the takeaway is something different:
Don’t mess with hungry bunnies.
Sources:
https://www.ripleys.com/stories/attacked-by-rabbits
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51364/time-napoleon-was-attacked-rabbits
This was an exceptional writing piece! Bravo.
Hi Reed, I enjoyed reading your article.