Napoleon's Hundred Days
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Napoleon Bonaparte's temporary return to power in France in 1815, following his escape from exile on Elba . He arrived with fewer than a thousand men, yet three weeks later he had displaced Louis XVIII and taken charge of an army as large as any that the Allied Powers could muster individually. He saw that his best chance was to pick the Allies off one by one, starting with the Prussian and then the British/Allied armies in what is now Belgium. He appeared to be on the point of victory at Waterloo yet somehow it eluded him, and his plans were soon in tatters. His escape to America thwarted, he surrendered on 15th July and was exiled again but this time to Saint Helena. There he wrote his memoirs to help shape his legacy, while back in Europe there were still fears of his return.
With
Michael Rowe Reader in European History at Kings College London
Katherine Astbury Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick
And
Zack White Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth
Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production.
Reading list:
Katherine Astbury and Mark Philp (ed.), Napoleon's Hundred Days and the Politics of Legitimacy (Palgrave, 2018)
Jeremy Black, The Battle of Waterloo: A New History (Icon Books, 2010)
Michael Broers, Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821 (Pegasus Books, 2022)
Philip Dwyer, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in power 1799-1815 (Bloomsbury, 2014)
Charles J. Esdaile, Napoleon, France and Waterloo: The Eagle Rejected (Pen & Sword Military, 2016)
Gareth Glover, Waterloo: Myth and Reality (Pen & Sword Military, 2014)
Sudhir Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon (Granta, 2014)
John Hussey, Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815, Volume 1, From Elba to Ligny and Quatre Bras (Greenhill Books, 2017)
Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great (Penguin Books, 2015)
Brian Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Harvard University Press, 2014)
Zack White (ed.), The Sword and the Spirit: Proceedings of the first ‘War & Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ Conference (Helion and Company, 2021)
Podcast Episodes
Margaret Beaufort
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who, as a child bride, became mother to the boy who would eventually become the first king in the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c1443-1509) was twelve when she married E…
The Columbian Exchange
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492. That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, ar…
The Code of Hammurabi
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the laws that Hammurabi (c1810 - c1750 BC), King of Babylon, had carved into a black basalt pillar in present day Iraq and which, since its rediscovery in 1901 in present day Iran, has aff…
The Roman Arena
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors. The shows there delighted the masses who…
Paul von Hindenburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and role of one of the most significant figures in early 20th Century German history. Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) had been famous since 1914 as the victorious commander at the…
The Korean Empire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Korea's brief but significant period as an empire as it moved from the 500-year-old dynastic Joseon monarchy towards modernity. It was in October 1897 that King Gojong declared himself Emp…
The Battle of Clontarf
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the best known events and figures in Irish history. In 1014 Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, defeated the Hiberno-Norse forces of Sigtrygg Silkbeard and allies near their Dublin st…
The Gracchi
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus whose names are entwined with the end of Rome's Republic and the rise of the Roman Emperors. As tribunes, they brought popular reforms to the Roman…
Cyrus the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the history and reputation of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the Second of Persia as he was known then was born in the sixth century BCE in Persis which is now in Iran. He was th…
Catherine of Aragon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), the youngest child of the newly dominant Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. When she was 3, her parents contracted her to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales…
