Napoleon’s Hundred Days and the Politics of Legitimacy
Katherine Astbury, Mark Philp (eds.),
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) 288 p,

Review by Rachel Rogers
Miranda, 17, 2018

"The editors suggest that the predominant legacy of the brief revival of Napoleonic rule was that, in its wake, no subsequent regime could achieve legitimacy without some form of popular consent....The broad approach to the question of “legitimation” is one of the strengths of the book. Indeed, the essays address how different cultural media (print, song, dance, theatre are discussed here) “inflect the public sphere, shape the debate about legitimacy, and influence the calculations made by those in the political scene”...The volume is divided into three clear sections. The essays in the first part address reactions within France to Napoleon’s return and tackle the question of whether and how Napoleon secured popular and elite backing as he crossed France and took up the reins of authority in Paris...Each of the essays in the second part, succinctly titled “Legitimacy Beyond France,” furthers readers’ awareness of the impact of Napoleonic conflict on former imperial territories and broaches the topic of how recently established regimes negotiated their legitimacy once Napoleon returned to the fray....The final two essays in this section deal with journalistic and satirical reactions to the Hundred Days."

https://journals.openedition.org/miranda/15379