Le Retour de l’Empereur

About this board game

Le Retour de l’Empereur is a Napoleonic battle simulation for 2–8 players, with sessions listed at 720 minutes. Using the Vive l’Empereur! system, it recreates four major battles of the 1815 campaign in Belgium: Quatre Bras, Ligny, Waterloo, and Wavre.

After Napoleon returned from Elba, he rebuilt an army and launched a preventive strike against the nearby Prussian army under Blücher and the Anglo-Allied army commanded by Wellington. The two armies, initially spread across a wide area, eventually assembled for a series of legendary engagements: Quatre Bras and Ligny on 16 June, followed two days later by Wavre and Waterloo—known as Mont Saint-Jean to the French and La Belle Alliance to the Prussians.

Players refight these battles at regimental scale, moving counters that represent the combat units involved across maps divided into hexes. The standard rules are combined with exclusive rules for each battle, including historical commentary and scenario-specific victory conditions. More than 30 scenarios and what-if situations let you explore the campaign’s many missed opportunities.

• Four battles from the 1815 campaign in Belgium
• More than 30 scenarios and what-if games
• A three-day campaign game
• Six 22×34-inch maps at a scale of 250 metres per hex
• 600 counters, including 300 combat units
• Standard Rules Version 3 and a special-rules booklet
• Ten charts and tables, including army-losses information

Le Retour de l’Empereur invites players to revisit a campaign shaped by timing, concentration, and decisions on both sides. Take command and see whether you can do at least as well—or better—than the historical armies of 1815.