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On the 26 February 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on Elba, arriving in France with fewer than a thousand Mendez.
Three weeks later, he was in Paris and he raised an army of about 200,000 men, as large as any that the allied powers could muster individually, and his best chance was to pick them off one by one.
Somehow victory escaped him at Waterloo and his escape to America was thwarted too.
He surrendered on the 15 July and so was exiled again, but on St Helena, where he wrote his memoirs to help shape his legacy.
With me to discuss Napoleon's hundred days are Catherine Astabury, professor of french studies at the University of Warwick, Zach White Lieberhum, early career research fellow at the University of Portsmouth and Michael Rowe, reader in european history at King's College, London.
Michael Rowe, why was Napoleon on Alba?
Well, the hundred Days, the subject of today's programme, of course, is in the spring of 1815.
We need to go back a year.
We need to go back to March and April, 1840.
The once great napoleonic empire is crumbling.
It's being invaded from all sides.
It is in deep trouble.
Napoleon's put up a good fight in France in early 1814, but the end is now drawing to a close and the allies need to get him to abdicate.
And indeed his marshals around him, who see that the empire is essentially finished, they need to get him to abdicate.
He's still in a position to negotiate the terms of his abdication.