7/5/2023 0 Comments One hundred days of resistance![]() Unbowed, Bonaparte hurried back to Paris, in an attempt to assume dictatorial powers on the model of Ancient Rome. The Battle of Waterloo, on June 18, was a triumphant victory for the Allied forces and a catastrophic defeat for France. The commander of that force was Arthur Wellesley, known as the Duke of Wellington. The Allied force at Quatre Bas withdrew to Waterloo, in what is now Belgium. The former was a French victory the latter was nondecisive. Bonaparte chose not to wait, attacking the Prussian force at Ligny on June 16 while Ney engaged the U.K. force had been sent to North America, to fight in the War of 1812. ![]() The gap between the declaration of war and the first major Allied action was to give Austria and Russia enough time to mobilize their forces sufficiently. The Allies had set a date of July 1 for an invasion of France. France had nowhere near that many soldiers. In the Treaty of Alliance, the signatories (Austria, Prussia, Russia, and the U.K.) had pledged to each contribute 150,000 men to opposing Bonaparte and France. A plebiscite approved a new constitution on May 25, and the parliament opened on June 1. On March 25, a familiar group of countries signed the Treaty of Alliance following that was the War of the Seventh Coalition.īonaparte resumed his position as emperor and, on April 23, set up a new two-house parliament, the lower chamber of which (the Chamber of Representatives) had 300 elected deputies and the higher of which (the Chamber of Peers) contained members appointed by the emperor. By that time, the Congress of Vienna had declared Napoleon an outlaw. They had faced not a single shot fired in anger. King Louis XVIII had left Paris on March 13, and Bonaparte and his men arrived the following week. The emperor's force moved on to Lyon, taking that city as well. The two forces met on March 18, and Ney abandoned his current instructions in order to take new ones from his former commander. Instead, ending the intervening silence was the cheer "Long live the emperor!" As well, Marshal Michel Ney, who had followed a great many orders from Bonaparte in the past, had been sent by the king with a force of 6,000 soldiers to arrest Napoleon and bring him back to Paris in an iron cage. Seeing this, Bonaparte opened his coat and calmly said, "If any of you will shoot his Emperor, here I am." No soldier fired a gun or in any other way attacked Bonaparte. On March 7, at Grenoble, the 5th Infantry stood opposed to the returned emperor and his renewed retinue. As well, even though the group of soldiers marching toward Paris grew steadily as it went, the response from various regiments was not always favorable. The path through the Alps was a difficult one, as always. The path was a relatively straight one, with the exception of Provence (still strongly loyal to the royalist faction), which Bonaparte and his men avoided by going through the Alps. ![]() They reached France on March 1.īonaparte and his small force, which was small only in relative terms and was in reality about 1,000, put ashore near Cannes and marched toward Paris. On one of those ships, the Inconstant, was Bonaparte, along with a group of loyal soldiers who had been with him on the island. 25, 1815, a flotilla of six ships sailed from Elba. All of this was known to Napoleon, and knowing all of this, coupled with his desire to still make a difference in the world, compelled him to escape his island exile. Were reports of the new French government's treating the people poorly. Closer to home, the people of France were not all that happy with another king (even though they had had an emperor serving over them for a few years). The strength of Russia scared and intimidated rulers in Western Europe. The remaining powers disagreed on how to proceed with regard to Poland and with Saxony and other German states. He didn't like what he found out.Īs time went on, the alliance that had coalesced into resistance to the French Empire in the person of Napoleon fragmented, as competing desires led to differences of opinion in how to carry on with relation to one another. He knew that the leaders of Europe were negotiating at the Congress of Vienna. He knew that France again had a king, Louis XVIII. While in exile, he kept abreast of the goings-on in Europe. It occurred in 1814–1815.īonaparte had arrived on Elba on May 14, 1814, a little more than a month after he had abdicated the French imperial throne. ![]() The Hundred Days was a term used to describe the brief return to power of Napoleon Bonaparte during the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars. ![]()
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