The Great Rabbit Retreat

Most people know Napoleon Bonaparte as the brilliant, brooding tactical mastermind who crowned himself Emperor of the French and set Europe ablaze. But few history books dedicate ink to his most humiliating and bizarre defeat: the Great Bunny Rout of 1807. To celebrate the Treaties of Tilsit, Napoleon’s chief of staff, Alexandre Berthier, organized a grand rabbit hunt, acquiring an estimated 3,000 bunnies. Unbeknownst to the Emperor, his aide had purchased tame farm rabbits instead of wild hares. When released, the horde didn't flee into the brush. Instead, associating humans with dinner time, they charged straight at Napoleon. The greatest general of the age was swarmed, panicked, and forced to physically beat them back before retreating to his carriage while bunnies literally climbed his imperial legs.

The Rom-Com Emperor

Behind the stern military visage, Napoleon possessed a surprisingly sensitive—and dramatically emo—soul. Years before he was conquering continents, he penned a painfully melodramatic romance novella titled Clisson et Eugénie. It featured a brooding, thinly veiled self-insert protagonist who complains extensively about unrequited love and heartbreak. His dramatic flair extended to his darker moments, too. Following his disastrous abdication in 1814, Napoleon attempted a tragic exit by drinking a vial of poison he had worn around his neck for years. Unfortunately for his theatrical grand finale, the poison had expired and lost its potency; instead of dying a tragic hero's death, he simply spent the night violently vomiting.

A Peculiar Post-Mortem

The Emperor's strangeness didn’t stop when his heart did. Napoleon’s afterlife and legacy are riddled with bizarre historical footnotes:

• The "Short" Myth: He was 5 feet 7 inches—totally average for an 18th-century Frenchman! The famous "Napoleon Complex" was entirely the result of brilliant British propaganda and a misunderstanding of French versus British inches.
• A Traveling Appendage: During his 1821 autopsy, his doctor allegedly severed his penis. This grim little souvenir changed hands for centuries across the globe, eventually being purchased by an American urologist and stored in a leather box under a bed in New Jersey.
• Wallpaper Warfare: He may have been murdered by his own decor. Some historians suspect the vibrant Scheele's Green wallpaper in his final exile home on St. Helena released toxic arsenic vapors in the damp climate, contributing to his demise.