Strategic situation in Western Europe in June 1815
Date
18 June – 7 July 1815 (2 weeks and 5 days)
Location
France
Result
Defeat and occupation of France
Belligerents
France
Seventh Coalition: Austria Russia Sardinia Switzerland Liechtenstein French royalists
Commanders and leaders
Adolphe Édouard Casimir Joseph Mortier (Imperial guard at Paris) Jean Rapp (Armée du Rhin) Suchet, Duc d'Albuféra (Armée des Alpes) Claude Lecourbe (Armée du Jura) Guillaume Brune Armée du Var
Charles Decaen and Bertrand, comte Clausel (Armies of the Pyrenees east and west) Jean Lamarque (Armée de l'Ouest — Vendée and Loire)
Prince of Schwarzenberg (Upper Rhine), Duke of Casalanza (Upper Italy), Johann Frimont (Naples) Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly (Russia) von Hake
v
t
e
Hundred Days
Waterloo campaign
Gilly
Quatre Bras
Ligny
1st Genappe
Waterloo
Wavre
2nd Genappe
Namur
Cambrai
Villers-Cotterêts
Aubervilliers
Saint-Denis
Rocquencourt
Sèvres
Issy
Minor campaigns
Rocheserviere
La Suffel
Reduction of the French fortresses
Caribbean
Guadeloupe
Chronology
15 June
16–17 June
17–18 June
18–24 June
25 June – 1 July
2–7 July
On 1 March 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from his imprisonment on the isle of Elba, and launched a bid to recover his empire. A confederation of European powers pledged to stop him. During the period known as the Hundred Days Napoleon chose to confront the armies of Prince Blücher and the Duke of Wellington in what has become known as the Waterloo Campaign. He was decisively defeated by the two allied armies at the Battle of Waterloo, which then marched on Paris forcing Napoleon to abdicate for the second time. However Russia, Austria and some of the minor German states also fielded armies against him and all of them also invaded France. Of these other armies the ones engaged in the largest campaigns and saw the most fighting were two Austrian armies: The Army of the Upper Rhine and the Army of Italy.
The Battle of Waterloo, followed as it was by the advance of the armies of Blücher and Wellington upon Paris, was so decisive in its effects, and so comprehensive in its results, that the great object of the War — the destruction of the power of Napoleon Bonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbon Dynasty under King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815 — was attained while the armies of the Upper Rhine and of Italy were but commencing their invasion of the French territory. Had the successes attendant upon the exertions of Blücher and Wellington assumed a less decisive character, and, more especially, had reverses taken the place of those successes; the operations of the Armies advancing from the Rhine and across the Alps would have acquired an immense importance in the history of the war: but the brilliant course of events in the north of France materially diminished the interest excited by the military transactions in other parts of France. The operations of the Confederation armies which invaded France along her eastern and south eastern frontier; afford a clear proof that amongst the more immediate consequences of the decisive Battle of Waterloo and speedy capture of Paris, was their having been the means of averting the more general and protracted warfare which would probably have taken place on these frontiers, had a different result in Belgium emboldened the French to act with vigour and effect a stronger defence of these parts of France.[1]
Part of France engraved by J. Kirkwood, showing the invasion routes of the Seventh Coalition armies in 1815. Red: Anglo-allied army; light green: Prussian army; orange: North German Federal Army; yellow: Army of the Upper Rhine; dark green: Army of Italy.
^Siborne 1895, pp. 764, 779, 780.
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Global Information
France
Austria
Russia
Sardinia
Switzerland
Liechtenstein
French royalists