Napoleon's First Abdication
Napoleon abdicated unconditionally on 6 April 1814 after his own marshals refused to march on Paris. The campaign of France that winter had been tactically brilliant and strategically hopeless. With about 70,000 men, many of them boys of eighteen called the Marie-Louises, he beat separate allied corps repeatedly in February; the allies then signed the treaty of Chaumont in March binding themselves not to negotiate separately, ignored his army, and marched on the capital. Paris capitulated on 30 March while he was manoeuvring behind them. He reached Fontainebleau and proposed to attack with what remained. Ney, Lefebvre and Moncey told him the army would obey its generals, Marmont's corps had already gone over to the allies, and the senate had voted his deposition. He abdicated first in favour of his son on 4 April; the allies refused a regency, and he signed an unconditional instrument two days later. He attempted suicide that night with a preparation carried since the retreat from Russia, which had lost its potency, and was extremely ill by morning. The Treaty of Fontainebleau gave him the sovereignty of Elba, an annual income from France that was never paid, and a guard of 600. He left on 20 April after a farewell to the Old Guard in the courtyard, kissing the eagle. He was on the island for 300 days and landed in France again on 1 March 1815. Marmont's defection gave French a verb. To raguse, from his title of Duke of Ragusa, meant to betray, and it stayed in the language long enough for him to complain about it in his memoirs.
- Year: 1814 CE
- Category: Political
