One hundred days

by Alan Schom

Europe, 1815: the Great Powers believed that they had at last successfully crushed the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Divested of his empire, exiled to the tiny island of Elba, the ex-conqueror had no army, no money, no ships - nothing but an empty title and his unflagging ambition. But his audacity admitted no defeat. Mustering a minuscule army of a thousand men, with few supplies, he sailed for France and set into motion the events that over the next one hundred days would propel a beleaguered Europe once again into total war, ending with the catastrophic battle of Waterloo, the routing of his Grand Army, and his second - and final - exile. In One Hundred Days, Alan Schom shows us, in his lively, immediate narrative style, the inevitability of Napoleon's return from exile and his doomed bid for power. Landing unopposed on French soil, the emperor and his skeleton force began their march through a hostile countryside impoverished by years of war, famine, and conscription. Yet the charism