Napoleon Escapes from Elba
On this day · 26 February 1815
One brig, a darkened harbour, and roughly a thousand men: how a deposed emperor slipped his island prison and reclaimed France.
On the evening of 26 February 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte quietly left the Mediterranean island of Elba, where the victorious allies had exiled him less than a year earlier. He boarded the brig Inconstant, trailed by a small flotilla, and set out for the French coast with around 1,000 men while the British watchdog assigned to him was away.
The gamble worked. After landing near Golfe-Juan on 1 March, Napoleon marched north as soldiers sent to stop him instead rallied to his side. By 20 March he was back in Paris, and the restored king Louis XVIII had fled.
A man the great powers thought finished had walked off his island and back onto a throne.
This improbable return launched the period known as the Hundred Days, a final burst of imperial power that ended in defeat at Waterloo in June 1815 and a second, far harsher exile to remote Saint Helena.
Sources & references
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