Escape from Elba, The: the Fall and Flight of Napoleon 1814-1815

The year is 1814. The Allies have driven Napoleon's once-mighty qrmies back to PAris. Trapped, forced to abdicate after two decades of triumphant rule, the Emperor takes leave of his comrades-in-arms and sets sail for his new domain - the tiny, poverty-stricken, pestilential island of Elba. Yet within ten months Napoleon will enter Paris once again, at the heels of the fleeting Bourbon king, flushed with victory and cheered by the masses. The Escape from Elba tells the heroic story of Napoleon's exlie and phoenix-like return. In this classic account, noe republished in paperback, Norman MacKenzie chronicles this extraordinary year: the tense last hours of Napoleon's empire, his humiliating exile, his midnight escape and his whirlwind march over snowbound mountains to Grenoble where, in a dramatic confrontation with the French army, he became a reigning prince again. Described in vivid detail are Napoleon's adventures as the head of Elba. He brouhgt society, splendor, organization and political intrigue to this run-down backwater. And he displayed on this small stage many sides of his charismatic. << AUTHOR: Noeman MacKenzie has had a long, distinguished career as an academic, historian an writer. He is probably best known for his acclaimed biographies, written in collaboration with his wife Jeanne, among them The Fabians, A Victorian Courtship: The Story of Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb, and Dickens: A Life. He has also written three historical novels. << SELLING POINTS: Classic account of Napoleon's exile on Elba and his triumphant return to Paris. Compelling portrait of Napoleon's complex, powerful personality. Perceptive study of the prelude to Waterloo and the last act of the Napoleonic Wars. 20 illustrations