The Hundred Days is the nineteenth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by British author Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1998. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars, specifically in their last portion in 1815, the Hundred Days.

Napoleon escaped his exile at Elba and gained a huge army as he marched up from the south coast of France to Paris, unseating Louis XVIII. The allies of 1813 and 1814 are coming together again to join their armies on land to stop Napoleon keeping the France he has retaken. Forces on the north coast of Africa are raising money to block the allied armies from joining, favouring Napoleon. Aubrey and his convoy are given the mission to destroy shipyards supporting Napoleon along the Adriatic Coast and to stop that money, if it indeed has been raised, from reaching its destination. Maturin and Dr Amos Jacob negotiate in Algiers, where, among other accomplishments, Maturin shoots a lioness leaping at him and the Dey of Algiers.

Reviewers enjoyed this novel, especially that it has all they expect of a novel in this series, plus more of a plot,

Publishers Weekly notes that "the prose moves between the maritime sublime and the Austenish bon mot, "a man generally disliked is hardly apt to lavish good food and wine on those who despise him, and Ward's dinners were execrable"." They enjoy O'Brian's staying power as a writer; "O'Brian continues to unroll a splendid Turkish rug of a saga, and if it seems unlikely that the sedentary Stephen would hunt lions in the Atlas mountains (with the Dey of Algiers!), O'Brian brings off even this narrative feat with aplomb."

Paul Kennedy writing in The New York Times says O'Brian's tales differ from others: "But these naval tales are blended into a larger panorama of Georgian society and politics, science, medicine, botany and the whole conspectus of contemporary Enlightenment knowledge about the natural world." A key to the success of the novel is "his invention of dual heroes, the bluff and ultracompetent Aubrey being always accompanied by his eccentric ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin". As this story brings the series to the final end of the Napoleonic wars, Kennedy asks, will this be the last novel? He thinks the closing, when the Admiral bids Aubrey to go to Chile, suggests there is more to come, as the real life of Thomas Cochrane, a sometime model for Aubrey, finds Cochrane in Chile in 1814.

Patrick Reardon writing in the Chicago Tribune says this novel is a bit different from the earlier ones in the series: "a bit unusual for books in the series inasmuch as it has more of a plot". Like the rest of the series, what gives the novel distinction is the "rendering of the internal lives of the characters--his loving and apt portrayal of their rich mix of feelings and experiences".

Anthony Day writing in the Los Angeles Times notes that "This is strictly an adventure tale." To the history of Napoleon's victorious return to France, building a huge army in weeks, and a strategy to defeat the allies once joined against him, "O'Brian has added a clever fictional twist. Muslim mercenaries have gathered in the Balkans willing to join Napoleon's forces--for a price. A sheik from a trading post in the Algerian desert holds that price, a nice store of gold." Of all the intriguing features of this novel, the best part is the "elegant and witty English prose consistent with late 18th-century diction, vocabulary and rhythm."

Writing for The Independent, Christina Hardyment feels that a reader will understand less the impact of some aspects of the plot, not having read the earlier books in the series, on account of the importance of the characters: each new book is "letter about a much-loved and ever-growing family of characters in an unerringly authentic and gloriously patriotic setting." She says of this book "that its recurring leitmotif is one of the subtlest sketchings of deep, deep grief in literature."

Series continuity

This novel begins about six weeks after the end of The Yellow Admiral, after Napoleon arrived in Paris with a large army, the king leaves Paris, and the Allied armies rapidly gather on the continent to engage Napoleon's army. Dramatic events in England brought Maturin home; he rejoins the squadron at Funchal.

The story concludes with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the final end of the Napoleonic wars until the treaties were signed in July 1815. Aubrey and Maturin set sail for Chile in the Surprise to undermine Spanish colonial rule there, promoting the independence movement, to gain an ally for Britain. This is a continuation of the theme started in The Wine-Dark Sea. Aubrey meets Captain Christy-Pallière as an ally, after first meeting him as the lieutenant who took him and his ship prisoner in the first novel, Master and Commander. Diana's diamond of great value, called the Blue Peter, was first mentioned in The Fortune of War, used to recover Maturin from a French prison in The Surgeon's Mate, pawned in The Yellow Admiral to support their family until Stephen's fortune is again available to him to buy it back, and in this novel, the diamond is buried with her.

Sailing to the Adriatic Sea, Aubrey sends Jacob to Kutali to speak with his allies there, to gain the latest information on the rumour from Christy-Palliere, about gold being sent to pay for soldiers who in turn would block the Russian army from joining the armies of the other allies. Aubrey and Maturin made friends in Kutali in The Ionian Mission. Links like this emphasise how Aubrey gained both allies and skills over the course of his naval career that serve him well when the war re-starts.

Deaths of characters in the series of novels

News of several deaths is received by Maturin and Aubrey in this story. Stephen's wife Diana dies, as does Aubrey's mother-in-law, Mrs Williams and her equally unpleasant companion, in a crash when Diana's daring driving overturns their coach. Diana's death leaves Stephen completely shattered, unwilling to eat or speak for long periods of time, but he pulls himself together to foil Napoleon's latest plot. Christine Hatherleigh Wood's husband, Captain Wood, the colonial governor of Sierra Leone also dies; Dr Glover tells Stephen their marriage was almost a sham given that the husband was impotent. Admiral Lord Stranraer's death is reported, as he took too much of the medication on his own choice, after the doctors properly tapered his dosage down. He was introduced in The Yellow Admiral as an influential admiral who spread ill will about Aubrey. Gossip has it the reverse (that the doctors increased the dosage, rather than the patient), likely because he was not a well-liked man.

As part of the last military action in this story, the coxswain for Aubrey, and frequent helper to Maturin, Barret Bonden, is killed instantaneously by the one cannon shot from the xebec. Other crew members are killed too, but none who began with Aubrey in Master and Commander, and sailed with him at every chance.

Historical and scientific references

There is a theme of the seaman's notion of luck and the curiosity of the scientists. Dr Amos Jacob brings aboard a preserved hand exhibiting what is described as palmar aponeurosis - and now known as Dupuytren's contracture, named for distinguished surgeon and Maturin's friend Baron Guillaume Dupuytren, a hand with the fingers bent inwards and the fingernails growing through the flesh of the palm. It is stored in the alcoholic spirits of wine to preserve it. Stephen Maturin also brings aboard a narwhal tusk given him by Aubrey from a previous Baltic voyage.

The superstitious seamen accept one as a Hand of Glory and the other as a unicorn's horn, and regard them as good luck charms. Seamen drink the spirits, leaving the hand much deteriorated, and put out to dry, to see what could be saved. The Marine Captain's dog, Naseby, eats the hand, and an emetic only recovers the bones. The narwhal tusk is broken when a drunken Killick and an even more drunken ship's boy drop and break it - something that makes the domineering Killick suddenly very unpopular with his shipmates. A measure of goodwill and luck are restored on the ship when Maturin wires the bones together to make a skeletal hand - even more sinister looking, which pleases the crew. Good luck is restored when a marine engineer, Mr Wright, glues the horn back together after he analyses its structure.

The idea and the methods to haul a gun up Cranc island came from a seaman who had been at Diamond Rock near Martinique in 1803, when several guns were brought up to make a secure position.

Allusion to real places

Aubrey sails his convoy to Gibraltar, then to Mahón. In seeking out ports with ships to burn or sink, they reach Ragusa Vecchia and next Porte di Spalato on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. In Algiers, Maturin visits the Kasbah, the palace of the Dey. The two-faced Dey promises no gold will sail from Algiers when Maturin saves his life from the attacking lioness, but at the same time directs that the gold sail from Arzila, just southwest of Tangiers, through the Strait of Gibraltar to Durazzo, an Adriatic port. The ship is hidden near Tarifa, the southernmost point of Spain, to the west and south of Gibraltar along the Strait of Gibraltar.

Publication history

  • 1998, UK, HarperCollins (), 7 September 1998, hardcover (First edition)
  • 1998, UK, HarperCollins (), 7 September 1998, audiobook (Audio Cassette, narrator Robert Hardy abridged)
  • 1998, USA, W. W. Norton & Company (), pub date October 1998, hardcover
  • 1998, Recorded Books, LLC; Unabridged Audio edition narrated by Patrick Tull ()
  • 1999, UK, HarperCollins, (), 20 September 1999, paperback
  • 1999, USA, W W Norton (), October 1999, hardcover
  • 2000, USA, Thorndike Press (), March 1999, hardcover (Large Print)
  • 2000, USA, Thorndike Press (), January 2000, paperback (Large Print)
  • 2001, USA, Soundings (), January 2001, audiobook (Audio CD, narrator Graham Roberts)
  • 2007, USA, Blackstone Audiobooks (), April 2007, audiobook (MP3 CD, narrator Simon Vance)
  • 2011, USA, W. W. Norton & Company (), 5 December 2011, e-book (USA edition)

References

  • The Hundred Days at the Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project

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