Some stories are too strange to stay in a drawer. This one is a legend, and we tell it as one.
In July 1807, Napoleon was at the height of his power. He had beaten the Russians, made peace with the Tsar on a raft in the middle of a river, and redrawn the map of Europe. To celebrate, his chief of staff arranged a rabbit hunt. The rabbits had other plans. This is the story behind Plate XVI of the Femage archive, They were expecting lettuce.
What was Napoleon celebrating?
The Treaties of Tilsit, signed in July 1807, ended the war between France and Russia. Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I had met on a raft moored in the Neman River, in full view of both armies.
The job went to Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier, Napoleon's chief of staff, a man who could move an army across a continent on schedule. A rabbit hunt should have been easy.
Where did the rabbits come from?
Here the story turns. According to the memoirs of General Paul Thiébault, the man sent to find the rabbits did not trap wild ones. He bought them from local farmers, not aware that there could be any difference between one rabbit and another. Hundreds of them, by most accounts. Some retellings say as many as three thousand.
They were tame. They had spent their lives being fed by people who walked toward them.
What happened when the cages opened?
The rabbits were released onto the lawn. The hunting party stood ready with their guns. And the rabbits, instead of scattering for the woods, turned and ran straight at the people. Straight at the Emperor.
The usual explanation is simple: they took the hunters for the people who brought their dinner. Thiébault wrote that the rabbits turned the Emperor's flank and attacked him in the rear. The historian David Chandler later described the horde dividing into two wings, pouring around the flanks of the party and heading for the imperial coach.
Napoleon, who had outmaneuvered Austria, Prussia and Russia, retreated to his carriage. Some versions say a few rabbits made it inside with him.
Did it really happen?
We do not know for certain, and that is why we call it a legend. The account comes from Thiébault's memoirs, written years later by a general who liked a good story. The treaty, the hunt's organizer and the general who wrote it down are real. The rabbits' exact numbers, and their exact intentions, are between them and history.
We love it anyway, because it has the shape of every story in the archive. Power arrives with its plans and its equipment. Something small, overlooked and underfed refuses to play its part. The plan does not survive.
The story is printed on a sepia card that comes with every shirt, like a page torn from an old newspaper, with space for its number written by hand. On this card, as here, the story is told as a legend.
If you have ever planned something perfectly and watched it hop the other way, the shirt is here: Plate XVI, They were expecting lettuce. Each plate is made in a numbered edition of 100, and you can reserve your number on the page. The other editions are in the Editions, and the first story in the archive is the Emu War of 1932.
Sources: the memoirs of General Paul Thiébault, as quoted and retold by Mental Floss, including the historian David Chandler's description. The story is anecdotal and is told here as a legend.
