Napoleon's Great Escapes The History of Napoleon's Escapes from Egypt and Elba

Free Download Napoleon's Great Escapes: The History of Napoleon's Escapes from Egypt and Elba by Charles River Editors
English | September 2, 2024 | ISBN: N/A | ASIN: B0DFZ391PL | 147 pages | EPUB | 10 Mb

Early in 1799, Napoleon advanced against France's erstwhile enemy, the Ottoman Empire, invading modern Syria (then the province of Damascus) and conquering the cities of Gaza, Jaffa, Arish and Haifa. However, with the plague running rampant through his army and his lines of supply from Egypt stretched dangerously thin, Napoleon was unable to destroy the fortified city of Acre and was forced to retreat. The retreat cost him almost all of his wounded as, harassed by enemy forces, he was forced to abandon most of his casualties to the Ottomans' mercy, or lack thereof. Most of the wounded were tortured and beheaded.

Upon returning to Cairo, Napoleon finally received dispatches from France which, with the Mediterranean rife with Royal Navy vessels, had been severely delayed. The dispatches told of renewed hostilities with Austria and her allies, and a series of defeats in Italy which had virtually annihilated all of Napoleon's previous hard-won gains in the Italian peninsula. Leaving his army under the command of his subordinate General Kleber, Napoleon took advantage of a lull in the Royal Navy blockade and embarked upon one of his remaining ships. He set sail for France, where he would take absolute power within weeks of his return.

Though Napoleon's unquenchable thirst for military adventurism eventually cost him both his throne and his freedom during the Napoleonic Wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the French emperor was not easily defeated even when most of Europe's nations united against him. Two military setbacks on a scale unprecedented in history until then were required before the high tide of Napoleon's success began to ebb towards the final denouement of the Hundred Days and the famous battle of Waterloo.

Although Napoleon was exiled after Leipzig, he was allowed to retain the title of Emperor and was given de facto control over Elba. But it should not be surprising the man who once ruled Europe was not content with the island of Elba. Separated from his family and cast away on a small island, Napoleon attempted suicide by taking a poison pill, but he had first carried the pill with him on the retreat from Moscow, rightly concerned about an uncertain fate at the time. The aging process had fatally weakened the pill, which stopped it from fatally weakening Napoleon.

Of all the incredible military feats Napoleon accomplished, none were more impressive than his escape from Elba and his return to France, which was literally a bloodless revolution. On February 26, 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba, and in a desperate gamble, he landed on the French mainland with less than a thousand men and marched on Paris.
What happened next was truly remarkable. An infantry regiment was sent to intercept Napoleon and his men, but Napoleon rode up to them alone and shouted, "Here I am. Kill your Emperor, if you wish." Upon seeing their once invincible leader before them, the soldiers mutinied and went over to his side en masse. Other corps soon followed, and in no time at all Napoleon found himself at the head of an army marching on Paris. The newly reinstituted Bourbon monarch fled the city, and so, with barely a shot fired, Napoleon found himself enthroned as emperor once more. In an astonishing feat of political chutzpah and military organization, within three months he had seized power anew and rebuilt his veteran forces to a strength of 200,000 men. Of these, 128,000 were assembled into the Armee du Nord, under Napoleon's personal command. Its mission quickly became the destruction of the British-Allied and Prussian armies assembling near Brussels, which would lead to Waterloo, the most famous battle in European history.

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