The Hundred Days
Napoleon's escape from Elba on 26 February 1815 with 1,100 soldiers triggered a drama of remarkable speed. Landing at Golfe-Juan on 1 March, he marched north through Grenoble — where troops sent to arrest him defected with their muskets reversed — and Lyon, gathering an army as he went without firing a shot. On 20 March 1815, Louis XVIII fled Paris and Napoleon entered the Tuileries Palace to find dinner still warm. The Allied powers at the Congress of Vienna declared Napoleon an outlaw and formed the Seventh Coalition within days. Napoleon moved rapidly to defeat them before their armies could concentrate, crossing into Belgium in mid-June. He defeated the Prussians at Ligny on 16 June and fought Wellington at Quatre Bras simultaneously. The decisive confrontation at Waterloo on 18 June ended in catastrophic French defeat when the Imperial Guard broke and Prussian forces arrived to complete the rout. Napoleon abdicated for the second time on 22 June 1815 — one hundred and eleven days after landing in France. The episode demonstrated both his extraordinary hold over French soldiers and the inexorable arithmetic of coalition warfare against a France that, after twenty-three years of nearly continuous war, could no longer match the manpower the Allies brought against him.
- Year: 1815 CE
- Category: Political
