On the evening of February 26, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte and 1,028 of his loyal men snuck onto seven ships and escaped the Mediterranean island of Elba. It had been almost a year since he abdicated the throne and was exiled by the restored Bourbon Monarchy, and he refused to wait any longer. It was time to take back his empire. In order to do so, Napoleon would have to get from France’s southern coast all the way up to Paris without running into the crown’s vastly superior military force. Napoleon…
