Early in 1814 three large foreign armies, totaling 400,000 men, and accompanied by the emperors of Russia and Austria and the king of Prussia, invaded northern France and converged on Paris. Blücher with his German troops was advancing up the Moselle to Nancy; Schwarzenberg with the Austrians crossed the Rhine to the south at Basel and Neu Breisach; Bernadotte in the Netherlands was welding Swedes, Dutch, and Prussians into a northern army. Meanwhile, the great defeat which Wellington with his allied army of British, Spaniards, and Portuguese, had inflicted upon the French at Vittoria (21 June, 1813) had for the last time driven King Joseph from Madrid and in effect cleared the whole Iberian peninsula of Napoleon's soldiers. The British general had then gradually fought his way through the Pyrenees so that in the spring of 1814 a fourth victorious allied army in the neighborhood of Toulouse threatened Napoleon from the south. An Austrian army, which was then operating in Venetia and Lombardy, menaced France from yet a fifth direction.
Against such overwhelming odds, Napoleon displayed throughout the desperate months of February and March, 1814, the same remarkable genius, the same indomitable will, as had characterized his earliest campaigns. If anything, his resourcefulness and his rapidity of attack were even greater. Inflicting a setback on one invader, he would turn quickly and dash against a second. Such apprehension did his tiger-like assaults excite among his opponents that as late as February he might have retained the French frontiers of 1792 if he had chosen to make peace. He would play the game to the bitter end. On 1 March, the four Great Powers—Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia—concluded the treaty of Chaumont, definitely cementing their alliance for a period of twenty years and mutually agreeing not to make terms without each other's consent nor to desist from war until their arch-enemy had been overthrown: each contracting party undertook to furnish 150,000 men, and Great Britain further promised a subsidy of five million pounds. The fate of Napoleon was at last settled.
[Sidenote: Surrender of Paris and Abdication of Napoleon]
To describe in any detail the brilliant campaign of 1814 lies outside our province. Suffice it to state that, after the most stubborn fighting, resistance was broken. Paris surrendered to the allies on 31 March, and thirteen days later Napoleon signed with the allied sovereigns the personal treaty of Fontainebleau, by which he abdicated his throne and renounced all rights to France for himself and his family, and, in return, was guaranteed full sovereignty of the island of Elba and an annual pension of two million francs for himself; the Italian duchy of Parma was conferred upon the Empress Maria Louisa, and pensions of two and a half million francs were promised for members of his family. Another seven days and Napoleon bade his Old Guard an affecting farewell and departed for Elba. In his diminutive island empire, hard by the shore of Tuscany and within sight of his native Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte lived ten months, introducing such vigor into the administration as the island had never experienced and all the while pondering many things.
[Sidenote: Restoration of the Bourbons in France]
[Sidenote: Compromise with the Revolutionary Ideas]
Meanwhile, in France order was emerging from chaos. In 1793 European sovereigns had banded together to invade France, to restore the divine- right monarchy of the Bourbons and the traditional rights of the privileged classes, and to stamp out the embryonic principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The most noteworthy significance of the Era of Napoleon was the simple fact that now in 1814 the monarchs of Europe, at last in possession of France, had no serious thought of restoring social or political conditions just as they had been prior to the Revolution. Their major quarrel was not with principles but with a man. The Tsar Alexander, to whom more than to any other one person, was due the triumph of the allies, was a benevolent prince, well-versed in the revolutionary philosophy, considerate of popular wishes, and anxious to promote a lasting peace. Talleyrand, the man of the hour among Frenchmen, who himself had played no mean rôle throughout the Revolution and under Napoleon, combined with a desire to preserve the frontiers of his country a firm conviction that the bulk of his countrymen would not revert to absolute monarchy. Between Talleyrand and Alexander it was arranged, with the approval of the Great Powers, that in the name of "legitimacy" the Bourbons should be restored to the throne of France, but with the understanding that they should fully recognize and confirm the chief social and political reforms of the Revolution. It was likewise arranged by the treaty of Paris (30 May, 1814), also in the name of "legitimacy," that France should regain the limits of 1792, should recover practically all the colonies which Great Britain had seized during the course of the Napoleonic wars, [Footnote: Great Britain kept Tobago and St. Lucia in the West Indies, and Mauritius (Île de France) on the route to India.] and should pay no indemnity. "Legitimacy" was a brilliant discovery of Talleyrand: it justified the preservation of France in the face of crushing defeat, and, if it restored the Bourbons, it did so as limited, not as absolute, monarchs.
[Sidenote: Louis XVIII]
Louis XVI's "legitimate" heir was his brother, the count of Provence, a cynical, prosaic, and very stout old gentleman who had been quietly residing in an English country-house, and who now made a solemn, if somewhat unimpressive, state entry into Paris. The new king kept what forms of the old régime he could: he assumed the title of Louis XVIII, "king of France by the grace of God"; he reckoned his reign from the death of the dauphin ("Louis XVII") in the year 1795; he replaced the revolutionary tricolor by the white and lilies of his family; out of the fullness of his divinely bestowed royal authority he granted a charter to the French people. But Louis XVIII was neither so foolish nor so principled as to insist upon the substance of Bourbon autocracy: the very Constitutional Charter, which he so graciously promulgated, confirmed the Revolutionary liberties of the individual and established a fairly liberal form of government for France. It was obvious that the gouty old man had no desire to risk his head or to embark again upon his travels.
[Sidenote: Monarchical Restorations Elsewhere in Europe]
The same month that witnessed the unbecoming straddle of this French Bourbon between revolution and reaction, beheld the restoration of another Bourbon in the person of Ferdinand VII to the throne of Spain, and the return of Pope Pius VII, amid the enthusiastic shouts of the Romans, to the ancient see upon the Tiber. About the same time Piedmont and Savoy were restored to Victor Emmanuel I, king of Sardinia. Europe was rapidly assuming a more normal appearance. To settle the outstanding territorial questions which the overthrow of Napoleon had raised, a great congress of rulers and diplomats met at Vienna in the autumn of 1814.