Napoleon wins at Waterloo, then what?

[Mr Grumpy]

Interesting question, although in the 1814 campaign Napoleon had won a series of battles this had only stalled the Allied advance and the campaign was won by the French being ground down by sheer weight of numbers, i have no reason to believe the campaign of 1815 (and maybe into 1816) would have been any different, one thing that united the Allies was that they knew after 20 years of fighting they could not allow Napoleon to establish himself in France again, so they would have thrown everything possible man at him.

A lot has been made of the forces in the North with maybe 500,000 Allied troops facing 200,000 French, a situation that Napoleons brilliance might have coped with, but a study of the forces in the south paints a very bleak picture for the French, 80,000 Spanish/Portuguese forces being faced by only 15,000 French and Suchet at Lyon had only 23,500 troops facing 100,000 Allied troops, it is hard to see how the French could have prevented large areas of France being occupied?

The last and maybe most important factor is that Napoleon showed a noticeable drop in his abilities in the Hundred Days campaign, a severe bout of Hemorrhoids was preventing him from ranging over the battlefield on horseback and his delegation of tactical decisions to other commanders proved fatal at Waterloo, no doubt he could have still achieved victories over the forces of Barclay de Tolly and Schwarzenburg, but in the end the chips were stacked too high against him i believe.