The Hundred Days refers to the period from Napoleon Bonaparte’s return to Paris on March 20th, 1815, following his escape from exile on the island of Elba, to the second restoration of King Louis XVIII to the French throne on July 8th, 1815, a period of approximately 110 days. During this extraordinary interlude, Napoleon reclaimed the French throne, assembled a new army, and launched a bold offensive campaign into Belgium in an attempt to defeat the allied powers before they could concentrate their full strength against him. The campaign ended in his decisive defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, followed by his second abdication and permanent exile to the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died in May of 1821. The Hundred Days was Napoleon’s final gamble, and its failure ended the Napoleonic Era definitively.
What Was the Napoleonic Era?
The Napoleonic Era refers to the period of French and European history dominated by Napoleon Bonaparte, lasting from his seizure of power in France in 1799 to his final defeat and exile in 1815. Napoleon had already been defeated once, in the War of the Sixth Coalition, and had abdicated in April of 1814 and been exiled to Elba. The Hundred Days represented his attempt to reverse that defeat and reclaim his empire. Its failure confirmed the verdict of 1814 and ended the era of Napoleonic dominance in Europe permanently.
Hundred Days – Napoleon on Elba and the Decision to Return
Napoleon arrived on the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany in May of 1814. The island had been granted to him under the Treaty of Fontainebleau as a small sovereign domain where he was to live in comfortable but effective captivity. He threw himself into governing the island with characteristic energy, reorganizing its administration, improving its roads, and commanding a tiny army and navy. However, he followed events in France and the wider world closely, and what he saw gave him reason to believe that an opportunity might exist to reclaim his throne.
The restored Bourbon monarchy under Louis XVIII was proving deeply unpopular with significant sections of French society. The old nobility and their supporters had returned from exile with what many French people saw as an arrogant attitude, seeming to have learned and forgotten nothing during the revolutionary and Napoleonic years. Veterans of Napoleon’s armies resented being placed on half pay or retired while emigre nobles were promoted over their heads. Liberal opinion was alarmed by the apparent threat to the revolutionary gains in law and social equality that Napoleon had preserved. Furthermore, the Congress of Vienna, which was meeting to redraw the map of Europe, was generating disagreements among the allied powers that threatened to fracture the coalition that had defeated Napoleon.
Convinced that France would welcome him back and that the allied powers were too divided to respond quickly and effectively, Napoleon decided to act. On February 26th, 1815, he escaped from Elba with approximately 1,000 soldiers and landed on the southern coast of France near Cannes on March 1st.
Hundred Days – The Return to Paris
The march from the coast to Paris was one of the most remarkable episodes in Napoleon’s extraordinary career. Louis XVIII sent troops to intercept him, but as Napoleon approached each force it went over to his side rather than fighting him. The most celebrated moment came near Grenoble, where the 5th Regiment of the Line blocked his path. Napoleon walked forward alone, opened his coat to expose his breast, and called out to the soldiers to shoot their emperor if they wished. The regiment broke ranks and flocked to him with cries of Vive l’Empereur. The incident was repeated in various forms as he marched north, and his force grew with each encounter.
Louis XVIII fled Paris on the night of March 19th, and Napoleon entered the capital the following day to enormous popular celebration. He had marched from the Mediterranean coast to Paris in twenty days without firing a shot, an achievement that astonished Europe. When word reached the Congress of Vienna, the assembled powers immediately declared Napoleon an outlaw on March 13th, 1815, and committed to deploying 150,000 men each against him. The War of the Seventh Coalition had begun.
Hundred Days – Napoleon’s Preparations
Napoleon moved quickly to consolidate his position and prepare for the inevitable military confrontation. He issued the Additional Act to the Constitution, a liberal document drawn up with the help of the writer Benjamin Constant, which modified the imperial constitution in a more liberal direction and was put to a public vote. He attempted through these measures to present himself as a constitutional rather than an absolute ruler and to broaden the base of his political support beyond the army veterans and Bonapartist loyalists who formed his core constituency.
He also worked to rebuild his military forces as rapidly as possible. The army available to him was much smaller than what he had commanded in the great years of his empire, and many of the soldiers were raw conscripts. However, he also had access to experienced veterans who had served under him before, and above all he had Marshal Ney, one of his greatest commanders, who had initially promised Louis XVIII to bring Napoleon back in an iron cage but instead went over to Napoleon when he encountered him during the march north.
Napoleon understood that his only realistic chance of survival was to strike before the coalition could assemble its full strength and to defeat the allied armies in detail before they could concentrate. The nearest enemy forces were the Anglo-Dutch army under the Duke of Wellington, assembled in Belgium, and the Prussian army under Field Marshal Blucher. Napoleon decided to strike into Belgium and destroy these forces before the Austrians and Russians could arrive.
Hundred Days – The Waterloo Campaign
Napoleon crossed into Belgium on June 15th, 1815, with his Army of the North of approximately 124,000 men. His plan was to drive between the allied armies, defeat them separately, and then turn on whichever survived. On June 16th, he engaged both enemies simultaneously. At Ligny he personally defeated Blucher’s Prussian army, inflicting significant casualties, while Marshal Ney fought a costly and inconclusive engagement against Wellington’s forces at Quatre-Bras. The plan appeared to be working.
However, the campaign began to go wrong at this point. After Ligny, Napoleon detached Marshal Grouchy with 33,000 men to pursue the Prussians and prevent them from rejoining Wellington. Grouchy followed the retreating Prussians but failed to maintain effective contact with them. The Prussians were able to reorganize more quickly than expected and moved to support Wellington rather than retreating eastward. Napoleon’s failure to destroy the Prussian army completely at Ligny, combined with Grouchy’s inability to keep it occupied, meant that Wellington would not face Napoleon alone on June 18th.
The decisive battle came at Waterloo, a few miles south of Brussels, on June 18th, 1815. Wellington had chosen a strong defensive position on a ridge south of the village of Waterloo and prepared to hold it until Prussian reinforcements arrived. Napoleon launched his main attack in the afternoon after waiting for the wet ground to dry, losing several critical hours. Wellington’s forces held the French attacks through a long and brutal afternoon of fighting, and Wellington later described the battle as the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.
In the early evening, Prussian forces under Blucher began arriving on Napoleon’s right flank in increasing numbers, having evaded Grouchy’s pursuit entirely. The combination of Wellington’s stubborn defense and the Prussian arrival proved too much for the French army. Napoleon launched his Imperial Guard, his elite reserve, in a final attempt to break the allied line. The Guard was repulsed, an event so unprecedented that it caused panic among the French troops who witnessed it, and the French army broke and fled in disorder. The battle was over. Napoleon’s last campaign had ended in total defeat.
Hundred Days – Second Abdication and Exile
Napoleon returned to Paris after Waterloo but found no political support for continuing the fight. The legislative chambers, led by the minister of police Joseph Fouche, moved to depose him, and his marshals refused to commit their remaining forces to further resistance. On June 22nd, 1815, Napoleon abdicated for the second time, in favor of his young son, who was recognized by no one. He tried briefly to make his way to the United States but found the French ports blockaded by the Royal Navy. On July 15th, 1815, he surrendered to the British captain of the HMS Bellerophon at Rochefort, effectively becoming a British prisoner.
This time the allied powers took no chances. Rather than a comfortable Mediterranean island, Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena, a remote British island in the South Atlantic Ocean roughly 1,200 miles from the nearest mainland. He arrived there in October of 1815 and remained under close British supervision until his death on May 5th, 1821, at the age of 51. The cause of his death has been debated ever since, with theories ranging from stomach cancer to deliberate poisoning.
Hundred Days – Significance
The significance of the Hundred Days in the history of the Napoleonic Era and of modern Europe is considerable. Most immediately, the episode made Napoleon’s defeat permanent in a way that the first abdication had not. The generous terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1814 had left Napoleon with a title, an income, and proximity to France, making a return attempt possible. The second settlement was designed to eliminate any such possibility, and the remote location of Saint Helena ensured that no second escape would occur.
The Hundred Days also produced a harsher peace settlement for France than the first defeat had. The Second Treaty of Paris, signed in November of 1815, imposed stricter terms on France than the settlement of 1814, including a larger indemnity, a longer allied military occupation, and the loss of additional border territories. Furthermore, the episode reinforced the determination of the conservative powers to suppress any revival of Bonapartism or revolutionary politics in Europe, contributing to the more repressive character of the post-1815 settlement under Metternich’s Concert of Europe.
The Battle of Waterloo itself became one of the most famous and studied military engagements in history, its name entering everyday language as a term for a decisive and final defeat. As such, the Hundred Days stands as the concluding act of the Napoleonic Era, a dramatic final chapter that confirmed both the extraordinary personal magnetism Napoleon retained even in defeat and the impossibility of restoring his empire against the united will of the major European powers.
