Napoleon's Greatest Gamble: Escape from Elba

Overview

February 1815. A small flotilla slips silently across the Mediterranean. On board: a former Emperor and fugitive, attempting the most audacious comeback in military history. Napoleon Bonaparte has dominated Europe for a decade. Defeated, exiled, and written off by the great powers of the world, he is supposed to be finished. Instead, he sails from Elba with just 1,000 men, marches on Paris... and the continent holds its breath. This episode maps Napoleon's extraordinary march north — from his landing at Golfe-Juan to the gates of Paris — tracing every twist of his impossible gamble in vivid detail. The Hundred Days has begun. But with 200,000 exhausted troops facing a million-strong coalition, can Napoleon's genius survive what's coming?