Escaped from his island exile on Elba, Napoleon Bonaparte marched north through France gathering troops and popular support, entering Paris on the night of March 20, 1815, just as King Louis XVIII fled. His return launched the Hundred Days, a dramatic final chapter of his career that would end three months later on the battlefield of Waterloo.
Napoleon had landed near Cannes on March 1 with fewer than a thousand men, a gamble against a restored Bourbon monarchy that had grown deeply unpopular. As he marched toward Paris, regiment after regiment sent to stop him instead defected and joined his ranks, chanting his name. Marshal Ney, who had promised King Louis XVIII he would bring Napoleon back "in an iron cage," switched sides within days.
By the time Napoleon reached the outskirts of the capital, Louis XVIII had already fled to Belgium, leaving the Tuileries Palace empty. Napoleon entered Paris that night to jubilant crowds, carried into the palace on the shoulders of his supporters, in what he later called the happiest moment of his life.
The triumph was short-lived. European powers meeting at the Congress of Vienna immediately declared him an outlaw and mobilized armies against him. Napoleon's Hundred Days ended on June 18 at Waterloo, and his second exile, this time to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, was permanent.