Napoleon abdicated unconditionally and was exiled to Elba
On this day · 11 April 1814
On April 11, 1814, the Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of an empire and handed him a single Mediterranean island to rule.
On April 11, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte signed his unconditional abdication, sealed by the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Having renounced “all right of sovereignty and domination” in France and across Europe, the emperor who had dominated a continent was reduced to a sovereign of one small island.
The terms were oddly generous. Napoleon kept the title of emperor, received the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba as a principality to rule in full, and was promised an annual pension of two million francs from the French treasury.
He reached Elba on May 30, 1814 — and would not stay long.
The arrangement lasted under a year. In March 1815, Napoleon slipped off the island, landed in France, and marched on Paris, reclaiming power for the brief, doomed campaign known as the Hundred Days. It ended at Waterloo, after which his second exile sent him far beyond Elba’s reach.
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