Napoleon's Hundred Days (1815): Escape From Elba to Paris

The Hundred Days was the brief return of Napoleon Bonaparte to power in France in 1815. Escaping from exile on the island of Elba, he landed in southern France on 1 March, reached Paris without a battle on 20 March and restored the Empire, before his defeat at Waterloo on 18 June ended his career for good. The episode forced Europe into one last coalition war and shaped the harsher peace that followed.

Background: exile on Elba

After the allied invasion of France in 1814, Napoleon abdicated and, under the Treaty of Fontainebleau of April 1814, was given the small Mediterranean island of Elba as a sovereign principality. He arrived there in May 1814 with a small guard and set about reorganising the island’s administration and roads.

In France, the Bourbon monarchy was restored under Louis XVIII, brother of the executed Louis XVI. The king granted a constitutional Charter, but his government made many enemies. Thousands of officers were put on half pay, returning émigré nobles seemed to threaten owners of former Church and noble land, and the white Bourbon flag replaced the revolutionary tricolour.

Napoleon followed these problems closely. He also had personal grievances: the pension promised to him was not paid, his wife Marie Louise and son stayed in Austria, and there were rumours that the allies meeting at the Congress of Vienna planned to move him to a more distant island.

The march on Paris

On 26 February 1815, while the British commissioner was away, Napoleon left Elba with about 1,000 men on the brig Inconstant and several smaller vessels. He landed at Golfe-Juan, between Cannes and Antibes, on 1 March.

To avoid the royalist south, he took mountain tracks through Grasse, Digne, Sisteron and Gap, the route now called the Route Napoleon. The decisive moment came on 7 March at Laffrey, south of Grenoble, where a battalion of the 5th Line Infantry blocked the road. According to well-established accounts, Napoleon walked towards them and invited them to shoot their emperor; the soldiers instead cheered and joined him. That evening the 7th Line under Colonel Charles de La Bédoyère also went over, and Grenoble opened its gates.

Lyon fell without resistance on 10 March. Marshal Michel Ney, who had sworn loyalty to Louis XVIII and reportedly promised to bring Napoleon back in an iron cage, changed sides at Lons-le-Saunier on 14 March. On the night of 19–20 March Louis XVIII fled Paris for Ghent in the Netherlands, and Napoleon entered the Tuileries Palace on the evening of 20 March.

The restored Empire

Napoleon tried to present himself as a liberal ruler. He asked his former critic Benjamin Constant to draft an “Additional Act” to the imperial constitutions, which created a two-chamber parliament and promised wider freedoms. It was approved in a plebiscite, but with very low turnout, and proclaimed at a ceremony in Paris called the Champ de Mai on 1 June 1815.

Support at home was uneven. Royalists rose in the Vendée in western France, many notables waited to see who would win, and the police minister Joseph Fouché secretly kept in contact with the allies. Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joachim Murat, King of Naples, attacked the Austrians in Italy on his own initiative and was defeated at Tolentino in early May.

Abroad, the powers at Vienna reacted immediately. On 13 March they declared Napoleon an outlaw, and on 25 March Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia agreed to put large armies into the field until he was overthrown. This became the Seventh Coalition.

The Waterloo campaign

Napoleon decided to strike first, before the Austrian and Russian armies could arrive. On 15 June he crossed into Belgium with about 120,000 men, aiming to separate the Anglo-Allied army under the Duke of Wellington from the Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher.

On 16 June he defeated the Prussians at Ligny, while Ney fought Wellington at Quatre Bras. But the Prussians retreated in order, and on 18 June they joined Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, where the French army was decisively beaten.

Second abdication and exile

Napoleon returned to Paris on 21 June. Facing a hostile Chamber of Representatives, he abdicated on 22 June in favour of his young son, but a provisional government led by Fouché took control and negotiated with the allies. Napoleon went to the Atlantic coast, hoping to sail to America, but the port was blockaded. On 15 July he surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of HMS Bellerophon.

Louis XVIII had already re-entered Paris on 8 July. The British government sent Napoleon to the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, which he reached in October 1815. He died there on 5 May 1821.

Consequences

The Second Treaty of Paris of 20 November 1815 was much harsher than the first. France lost some frontier territory, had to pay an indemnity of 700 million francs and accepted an allied army of occupation, which stayed until 1818.

Inside France, a wave of royalist reprisals known as the White Terror followed in the south. Marshal Ney was tried for treason and shot on 7 December 1815, and La Bédoyère was also executed. The episode left a deep divide between royalists and Bonapartists that lasted for decades.

Key people

• Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821): the former emperor, who staked everything on a quick return and a short, decisive campaign before the allies could unite.
• Louis XVIII (1755–1824): the restored Bourbon king, who fled to Ghent and returned after Waterloo. His enemies mocked him for coming back “in the baggage train” of foreign armies, a charge that damaged the monarchy’s image.
• Michel Ney (1769–1815): one of Napoleon’s most famous marshals, whose change of sides in March made him a symbol of betrayal to royalists and cost him his life after the restoration.
• Joseph Fouché (1759–1820): Napoleon’s minister of police during the Hundred Days, who secretly kept contact with the allies and the Bourbons and steered the transition after the second abdication.
• Duke of Wellington and Gebhard von Blücher: commanders of the British-led and Prussian armies whose cooperation in Belgium decided the campaign.

Myths and facts

The name “Hundred Days” is not an exact count. The phrase was used by the Prefect of the Seine, Count Chabrol, in his speech welcoming Louis XVIII back to Paris, and the period between the king’s flight and his return actually lasted about 111 days.

Napoleon’s return is often imagined as a triumphal procession through a united France. In reality he deliberately avoided the strongly royalist Rhône valley and Provence, and his support came mainly from soldiers, peasants who feared the return of feudal dues and townspeople in the east and centre. Many middle-class notables and much of the west stayed cautious or hostile.

Nor did Napoleon return with an army. He landed with only about 1,000 men; his strength came from the regiments sent to stop him, which joined him one after another.

Timeline

• 1815, 26 February: Napoleon leaves Elba with about 1,000 men.
• 1815, 1 March: He lands at Golfe-Juan on the Mediterranean coast.
• 1815, 7 March: Royal troops at Laffrey join him; Grenoble opens its gates.
• 1815, 13 March: The Congress of Vienna declares Napoleon an outlaw.
• 1815, 20 March: Napoleon enters Paris after Louis XVIII flees.
• 1815, 18 June: Defeat at Waterloo.
• 1815, 22 June: Napoleon abdicates for the second time.
• 1815, 8 July: Louis XVIII returns to Paris.
• 1815, 15 July: Napoleon surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon.

Why it matters

The Hundred Days showed how fragile the restored monarchy was and how strong Napoleon’s hold remained on the army and ordinary French people. Its failure ended the Napoleonic Wars, sent Napoleon to his final exile and led the victors to impose a stricter peace that shaped Europe for a generation.