Flight of the Eagle

Napoleon left Portoferraio on 26 February 1815 with seven vessels and eleven hundred men, including four hundred grenadiers of the Guard and a hundred Polish lancers. The landing at the Golfe-Juan on 1 March met no resistance. The direct road up the Rhône valley ran through the royalist south: he chose the Alps, mule tracks and snowbound passes, abandoning his artillery.

On 7 March, at the entrance to the Laffrey defile, the 5th of the line barred the road, sent from Grenoble to arrest him. Napoleon had arms tucked under the elbow, walked forward alone within musket range and opened his greatcoat: "If there is one among you who wishes to kill his emperor, here I am." The soldiers broke ranks shouting "Vive l'Empereur!". That evening Grenoble opened its gates; on the 10th Lyon welcomed him.

At Auxerre on the 17th, Ney — who had promised Louis XVIII to bring him back "in an iron cage" — joined him with six thousand men. The king left the Tuileries during the night of 19-20 March and made for Ghent.

On the evening of 20 March the Emperor was carried shoulder-high up the Tuileries staircase by a crowd of officers. A thousand kilometres in twenty days, a throne recovered without a shot: it is the most novelistic episode of his life, the one the Moniteur followed by changing its vocabulary daily, from "the usurper" to "His Majesty the Emperor".

But Europe did not follow: the Congress of Vienna had outlawed him on 13 March. Reconquering a country did not amount to recognition; a hundred days remained to obtain it by arms.