Imperial Gamble: The Internal Corrosion of Napoleon’s Liberal Empire

Abstract:

This paper explores the correlation between the domestic political situation of France in 1815 and Napoleon Bonaparte’s failure to retain credibility and legitimacy during his gamble to regain his throne. The Hundred Days, the period of three months between Napoleon’s return from exile to his defeat at Waterloo, proved to be an extraordinarily complex timeframe. Conflicting evaluations of the causes and significance of the events of these months have plagued its historiography from nearly the moments that the guns fell silent and the Emperor finally resigned himself to defeat. For over a century after the events of 1815, the accepted narrative overwhelmingly focused on the Battle of Waterloo as the deciding factor in Napoleon’s second abdication, but within the last several decades a growing consensus has emerged within the field that asserts that the dire condition on the home front severely limited Napoleon’s ability to emerge victorious, well before the battle lines had been drawn. The Hundred Days represented the returned Emperor’s last hope to salvage his reputation and reassert his sovereignty, but Napoleon’s glaring inability to manipulate France’s fractious politics and competing ideologies and demands fatally crippled his bid to align the country behind his agenda. Napoleon’s failure to unite France into common cause spelled disaster and disgrace for both the man and the country, with effects that have reverberated in political and historical discourse for the last two centuries.