Napoleon and the Hundred Days (export e.)

A dazzling new portrait of the legendary emperor whose genius, courage and tenacity won and lost him an Empire In Vienna, 1815, the political aristocrats of Europe gathered to determine the fate of the continent after the defeat of Napoleon.

Yet as they assembled the news arrived that Napoleon had escaped captivity and was returning to France.

Bonaparte, the revolutionary-turned-Emperor and "disturber of the world's peace", was fast approaching Paris, gathering troops and taking cities without firing a single shot.

He had returned, and it would be just one hundred days before he met his enemies in a final, epic battle.

Napoleon and the Hundred Days vividly re-creates the rise and fall of Bonaparte's empire, and brings to life the characters that shaped it.

Figures such as Britain's Iron Duke, Wellington; Napoleon's great love, Josephine; the duplicitous French minister, Talleyrand; and of course Napoleon himself.

With his historian's eye and novelist's dramatic style, Stephen Coote describes how the path to war became inevitable and how, at the battle of Waterloo the fatigued but ever arrogant Napoleon met his match.