By the new year of 1815, when the treaty of Ghent had been signed, England was at peace with all men, and the Liverpool ministry began to take in hand the reduction of our army and navy, the restoration of finance, and the protection of English interests in the resettlement of Europe at the congress at Vienna, which had met in the previous autumn. All the diplomatists of the great powers were hard at work settling the new boundaries of their states, when suddenly the alarming news was heard that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and landed in France. The rule of the selfish old Lewis XVIII. and the elderly companions who had returned with him from a twenty years' exile, had irritated and disgusted the French, and most of all the army. When, therefore, Napoleon landed in Provence with seven hundred men, and called on his countrymen to rise in behalf of liberty and expel the imbecile Bourbons, his appeal met with a success such as he himself had hardly hoped for. Not a shot was fired against him; regiment after regiment went over to his side, and Lewis XVIII. had at last to fly from Paris and take refuge in Flanders (March, 1815). Napoleon proclaimed himself Emperor once more, but promised the French a liberal constitution in place of his old autocratic rule. He also made overtures to the allied powers, saying that he was tired of war, and would accept any honourable terms. But they knew his lying tongue of old, and wisely refused to listen to his smooth speeches. One after another, all the monarchs of Europe declared war on him.
Napoleon enters Belgium.—Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras.
Napoleon's second tenure of power was only to last from March 13 till June 22, 1815, the "Hundred Days," as they are generally called. Forced to fight, he displayed his old energy, and resolved to strike at the allies before they could concentrate their scattered forces from the remotest ends of Europe. He called his old veterans to arms, and hastily organized an army of 130,000 men for an immediate attack on the nearest foe. By waiting longer he could have collected an army thrice as great, but, on the other hand, his enemies would have been able to mass their whole force against him. The only troops ready to oppose him by June, 1815, were two armies in Belgium, one of Prussians under the old Marshal Blücher, which lay about Namur, Liège, and Charleroi, the other a combined force of British, Germans, and Dutch under Wellington, now a duke, stationed round Brussels and Ghent. The Prussians were 120,000 strong, and Wellington had 30,000 English and 65,000 Hanoverians, Germans, and Dutch. Napoleon was therefore bound to be outnumbered, but he thought that he could crush one army before the other came to its aid, if he could only strike hard and fast enough. His advance into Belgium was rapid and skilful. He made for the point where the English left touched the Prussian right, near Charleroi, and thrust himself between them. On June 16 he engaged and beat Blücher's Prussians at Ligny, while his lieutenant, Marshal Ney, held back at Quatre Bras the front divisions of Wellington's army as they came marching up to try to join the Prussians.
The Prussians were severely beaten, but the indomitable old Blücher gathered together his defeated forces, and marched north to rejoin the English, while Napoleon vainly dreamed that he was flying eastward towards Germany. Thus it came to pass that the Emperor sent Marshal Grouchy and 33,000 men to pursue the Prussians on the wrong road, a mistake which allowed Blücher to execute an undisturbed retreat on Wavre, where he was again in touch with the duke.
Meanwhile, Napoleon, on the 17th, marched to join his lieutenant Ney, who had been forced back from Quatre Bras by the English, and needed his aid. The Emperor, believing that the Prussians were disposed of, thought he could now deal a crushing blow at Wellington's motley army, and was overjoyed when he found the duke offering him battle on the hillside of Mont St. Jean, twelve miles north of Quatre Bras, in a good position which covered the road to Brussels. On this hillside was fought next day (June 18, 1815) the decisive battle which the English call Waterloo, from the name of the village where Wellington wrote his despatch that same night.
WATERLOO June 18, 1815.
The Battle of Waterloo.