Stock Photo - 'The 'Infernal Machine', 24 December 1800, (19th century?). The most serious - and very nearly successful - attempt on Napoleon Bonaparte's (1769-1821) life took place in Paris on Christmas Eve in 1800 when a massive bomb exploded near his carriage as he went to the opening night of Haydn's opera, 'Creation'. Royalist plotters, led by French Royalist leader Georges Cadoudal had positioned a horse and wagon bearing a barrel filled with gunpowder and shrapnel on the Rue Saint-Nicaise and lit the fuse as Bonaparte's carriage neared. An estimated 52 people were killed or wounded by the device - known as the Infernal Machine - including Bonaparte's stepdaughter Hortense Beauharnais, who was cut on the wrist by flying metal.