If there’s an empire with your name on it, it means you don’t lose a lot of battles. World-conquering is a bit like boxing: a 50/50 win-loss record simply ain’t gonna cut it. Napoleon fits this bill, though, of course, his empire would eventually fall. But up until Waterloo, when he finally had to hang his funny hat in shame, he’d fought in 60 battles and only lost seven. The rarity of him being bested must have made Waterloo even more crushing.
It might not be his most shameful defeat, however. There’s one additional battle that ended in Napoleon’s retreat, and it’s not even counted among the tally above — for good reason, since he wasn’t fighting humans. This skirmish occurred in 1807, right after the Treaties of Tilsit ended fighting between Napoleon’s forces and Russia. In fact, it was meant to be a celebration of the event, in the form of a rabbit hunt. A less-than-successful rabbit hunt wouldn’t do, though, so thousands of local rabbits were collected in order to stack the deck.
But when they were released en masse to serve as target practice, they instead displayed courage and resilience. These thousands of wild rabbits didn’t prance around panicked, waiting for their turn to catch a bullet; they charged Napoleon and friends. Napoleon thought it was going to be the world’s easiest hunting trip, when suddenly a veritable tsunami of rabbits came crashing his way.
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Faced with overwhelming numbers, Napoleon understandably but embarrassingly decided he wanted the hell out there. He fled to his carriage, where I assume he twiddled his thumbs, and flinched while rabbit-shaped silhouettes banged against the window. The rabbits refused to stop until Napoleon fully retreated, and for that, a bunch of bunnies deserve to be included in his official loss column.