Napoleon's Abdication and Exile to Elba
By early 1814, the Sixth Coalition had crossed the Rhine and was advancing on Paris. Napoleon fought a brilliant but ultimately futile defensive campaign in northeastern France. His marshals, exhausted after twenty years of war, refused to continue fighting and pressured him to negotiate. On 30 March 1814, Coalition forces entered Paris. Napoleon's Senate voted to depose him on 3 April, and on 6 April he signed the Act of Abdication. Under the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was allowed to retain the title of Emperor and was given sovereignty over the island of Elba, with a pension of two million francs from France. The Bourbon dynasty was restored in the person of Louis XVIII. Napoleon arrived on Elba in May 1814, apparently resigned to his diminished realm. He ran its administration with his customary energy, but chafing at his gilded cage and alarmed by rumours that his pension would not be paid and that he might be exiled to a more remote location, he made his escape on 26 February 1815, landing in the south of France and marching on Paris — triggering the Hundred Days.
- Year: 1814 CE
- Category: Political
