Napoleon Bonaparte
For almost decade, Napoleon Bonaparte dominated Europe. Though relatively diminutive in stature, he was a true military and political giant. At the height of his powers, Napoleon defeated the armies of Austria, Prussia and Russia and he looked unbeatable. But, as with every stage of European history, his dominance couldn’t last forever. He was eventually defeated and forced into exile. But even this couldn’t keep him down and, less than a year after being thrown out of his native France, he not only plotted his comeback, but he actually went and pulled it off…
After enjoying a series of remarkable military successes, Napoleon finally suffered a setback when he tried to invade Russia in 1812. The strategic gamble cost him a large portion of his army and so he then suffered a series of crushing defeats, most notably at the Battle of Leipzig and the Battle of Reims. In April 1814, Napoleon’s time was up. He stepped down from the throne, with King Louis XVIII taking over as leader of France. His enemies decided to exile him to the island of Elba, off the western coast of Italy, while they got busy redrawing the map of Europe.
Napoleon might have lived out his days in comfort on the sun-kissed island. Instead, he spent just under 10 months on Elba. He was determined to get back to mainland Europe and halt the destruction of the French Empire. Remarkably, he slipped off the island under the noses of the British and the French. With 1,000 men under his command, he sailed back to mainland France unopposed. Indeed, rather than firing on him, troops supposedly loyal to the King of France joined Napoleon instead. Before long, he was back in Paris and King Louis fled. He took command of France again and immediately got to work reorganising the government and, more importantly, of getting his armies ready to fight back against the allied powers determined to impose the terms of the Congress of Vienna on Europe.
Napoleon’s comeback from exile to being the single most powerful man in Europe was indeed remarkable. At the same, however, it was also short-lived. His second spell as Emperor is known as the Hundred Days, because this is exactly how long it lasted. Far from defeating his enemies once and for all, Napoleon himself was routed by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. Again, he was sent into exile, this time to Saint Helena. The British territory was truly remote, and so from here there was to be no second comeback. Napoleon stayed on the island for six years before he died of ill health in 1821, aged just 51.