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Home The Napoleonic War, 1803-1815 The "Hundred Days", 1815 |
The "Hundred Days", 1815Napoleon, on his abdication, had been given Elba - a small "island off Tuscany - to rule as an independent principality. Meanwhile the Bourbon line in the person of Louis XVIII - a brother of Louis XVI - had been restored in France, and a great Congress - in which Lord Castlereagh represented Great Britain - was held at Vienna to settle the affairs of Europe. The congress had not completed its labours when suddenly it heard of Napoleon's return to France. The temporary absence of the British frigate which watched Elba had enabled Napoleon to escape and to land in France with eight hundred men. He was received in France by his old soldiers with enthusiasm, and reached Paris on March 20, 1815, without so much as firing a shot. Then begins the period known in history as that of "the Hundred Days". Louis XVIII had to fly. Napoleon reconstituted the Government, and announced that he was going to pursue a policy of peace towards other countries and to grant liberal institutions to France. But the allies put no trust in Napoleon's promises. The Congress of Vienna outlawed him, and declared him to be an enemy and disturber of the peace of the world. Each of the big powers - Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia - undertook to supply a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, whilst Great Britain as usual was to provide subsidies.The plan of the allies was to make a joint advance upon Paris. But in June only the British and Prussians were ready. In Belgium, Wellington had about eighty-five thousand men under his command; one-third were British (very few of whom had seen any service before), one-third Germans, and one-third Dutch Belgians. Blucher, the Prussian general, commanded some hundred and twenty-four thousand Germans. Wellington and Blucher were acting in concert, and their combined armies were spread over a very much-extended line, not far short of a hundred miles in length, and some miles away from the French frontier. Napoleon's idea was to make a sudden and unexpected attack on the centre of the allied line; this would enable him to push his own forces like a wedge between Wellington and Blucher, and, as their bases lay in opposite directions, the one to the west and the other to the east, to defeat them in detail Leaving Paris on June 12, Napoleon marched to the frontier, passed through Charleroi, and by the evening of the i5th he himself was in front of part of the Prussian forces which lay at Ligny, whilst Ney, his chief commander, was some seven miles farther west at Quatre Bras, where some of Wellington's troops were posted. |
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