Type | Bilateral treaty |
---|---|
Signed | 20 November 1815 |
Location | Paris, France |
Original signatories | |
Full text | |
Treaty of Paris (1815) at Wikisource |
The Treaty of Paris of 1815, also known as the Second Treaty of Paris, was signed on 20 November 1815, after the defeat and the second abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte. In February, Napoleon had escaped from his exile on Elba, entered Paris on 20 March and began the Hundred Days of his restored rule. After France's defeat at the hands of the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo, [1] Napoleon was persuaded to abdicate again, on 22 June. King Louis XVIII, who had fled the country when Napoleon arrived in Paris, took the throne for a second time on 8 July.
The 1815 treaty had more punitive terms than the treaty of the previous year. France was ordered to pay 700 million francs in indemnities, and its borders were reduced to those that had existed on 1 January 1790. France was to pay additional money to cover the cost of providing additional defensive fortifications to be built by neighbouring Coalition countries. Under the terms of the treaty, parts of France were to be occupied by up to 150,000 soldiers for five years, with France covering the cost. However, the Coalition occupation under the command of the Duke of Wellington was deemed necessary for only three years; the foreign troops withdrew from France in 1818 (Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle). [2] [3]
In addition to the definitive peace treaty between France and Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, there were four additional conventions and an act confirming the neutrality of Switzerland, signed on the same day. [4]
The 1815 peace treaties were drawn up entirely in French, the lingua franca of contemporary diplomacy. There were four treaties, between France and each of the four major Seventh Coalition powers: Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia. All four treaties were signed on the same day (20 November 1815), had verbatim stipulations, and were styled the same way (for example the "Definitive Treaty between Great Britain and France"). [4]
The treaty was harsher towards France than the Treaty of 1814, which had been negotiated through the manoeuvre of Talleyrand, because of reservations raised by the recent widespread support for Napoleon in France. France lost the territorial gains of the Revolutionary armies in 1790–92, which the previous treaty had allowed France to keep; the nation was reduced to its 1790 boundaries (plus the enclaves of the Comtat Venaissin, the County of Montbéliard and the Stadtrepublik Mülhausen, which France was allowed to keep, but minus a few patches of territory along the northern border, including Landau and the Saarlouis exclave, which had been French since 1697, as well as six French communes bordering Lake Geneva which were ceded to the Republic of Geneva so that it be connected to the rest of Switzerland. [5] France was now also ordered to pay 700 million francs in indemnities, in five yearly instalments, [6] and to maintain at its own expense a Coalition army of occupation of 150,000 soldiers [7] in the eastern border territories of France, from the English Channel to the border with Switzerland, for a maximum of five years. [8] The twofold purpose of the military occupation was rendered self-evident by the convention annexed to the treaty outlining the incremental terms by which France would issue negotiable bonds covering the indemnity: in addition to safeguarding the neighboring states from a revival of revolution in France, it guaranteed fulfilment of the treaty's financial clauses. [9]
Although some of the Allies, notably Prussia, initially demanded that France cede significant territory in the East, rivalry among the powers and the general desire to secure the Bourbon Restoration made the peace settlement less onerous than it might have been.[ citation needed ] The treaty was signed for Great Britain by Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington and by Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu for France; parallel treaties with France were signed by Austria, Russia, and Prussia, forming in effect the first confederation of Europe. The Quadruple Alliance was reinstated in a separate treaty also signed 20 November 1815, introducing a new concept in European diplomacy, the peacetime congress "for the maintenance of peace in Europe" [10] on the pattern of the Congress of Vienna, which had concluded 9 June 1815.
The treaty is brief. In addition to having "preserved France and Europe from the convulsions with which they were menaced by the late enterprise of Napoleon Bonaparte", [10] the signers of the Treaty also repudiated "the revolutionary system reproduced in France". [10]
The treaty is presented "in the desire to consolidate, by maintaining inviolate the Royal authority, and by restoring the operation of the Constitutional Charter, the order of things which had been happily re-established in France". The first Treaty of Paris, of 30 May 1814, and the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, of 9 June 1815, were confirmed. On the same day, in a separate document, Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia renewed the Quadruple Alliance. The princes and free towns, who were not signatories, were invited to accede to its terms, [11] whereby the treaty became a part of the public law by which Europe, with the exclusion of the Ottoman Empire, [12] established "relations from which a system of real and permanent balance of power in Europe is to be derived". [13]
An additional article appended to the treaty addressed the issue of slavery. It reaffirmed the Declaration of the Powers, on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, of 8th of February 1815 (which also formed ACT, No. XV. of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna) and added that the governments of the contracting parties should "without loss of time, ... [find] the most effectual measures for the entire and definitive abolition of a Commerce so odious, and so strongly condemned by the laws of religion and of nature". [14] [15]
A convention on pecuniary indemnity regulated the mode of liquidating the indemnity of 700 millions francs to be paid by France, in conformity to the fourth article of the treaty. The sum was to be paid, day by day, in equal portions, in the space of five years, from 1 December 1815. [16]
Thus, France was required to pay on account of this convention 383,251 francs every day for five years, equal to about 16,000 pounds sterling at the exchange rate of the day. [16] For this daily quota, the French government had to give assignations on the French treasury, payable to bearer, day by day. In the first instance, however, the Coalition Commissioners were to receive the whole of the 700 million in fifteen bonds of 46⅔ million each; the first of which was payable on 31 March 1816, the second on 21 July 1816, and so on, every fourth month. In the month preceding the commencement of each of these four monthly periods, France was to redeem successively one of these bonds for 46⅔ millions, by exchanging it against the first-mentioned daily assignations payable to bearer, which assignations, for the purpose of convenience and negotiability, were again subdivided into coupures , or sets of smaller sums. As a guarantee for the regular payment of these assignations, and to provide for deficiencies, France assigned, moreover, to the allies, a fund of interest, to be inscribed in the Grand Livre of her public debt, of seven millions francs on a capital of 140 millions. A liquidation was to take place every six months, when the assignations duly discharged by the French Treasury were to be received as payments to their amount, and the deficiency arising from assignations not honoured would be made good, with interest, at five percent from the fund of interest inscribed in the Grand Livre, in a manner specified in this convention. [16]
The distribution of the sum among the Coalition Powers, agreed to be paid by France in this convention, was regulated by a separate convention, the Protocol for the pecuniary indemnity to be furnished by France and the Table of allotment: [16]
State | Francs | Total | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Austria | 100,000,000 | |||
Russia | 100,000,000 | |||
Great Britain | 100,000,000 | |||
Prussia | 100,000,000 | |||
Subtotal | 400,000,000 | |||
State | Men | Francs | ||
The German States, together with the Netherlands and Sardinia, a like sum of 100 million, to be shared at the rate of 425 francs 89 centimes and a fraction for each man furnished by them respectively: [17] | ||||
Bavaria | 60,000 | 25,517,798 | ||
Netherlands | 50,000 | 21,264,832 | ||
Württemberg | 20,000 | 8,505,932 | ||
Baden | 16,000 | 6,804,746 | ||
Saxony | 16,000 | 6,804,746 | ||
Sardinia | 15,000 | 6,379,419 | ||
Hesse-Kassel | 12,000 | 5,103,559 | ||
Hanover | 10,000 | 4,252,966 | ||
Hesse-Darmstadt | 8,000 | 3,408,373 | ||
Mecklenburg-Schwerin | 3,200 | 1,616,127 | ||
Nassau | 3,000 | 1,275,889 | ||
Brunswick | 3,000 | 1,275,889 | ||
Hamburg & Bremen | 3,000 | 1,275,889 | ||
Saxe-Gotha | 2,200 | 935,632 | ||
Saxe-Weimar | 1,600 | 680,474 | ||
Anhalt | 1,600 | 680,474 | ||
Oldenburg | 1,600 | 680,474 | ||
Schwarzburg | 1,300 | 552,885 | ||
Lippe | 1,300 | 552,885 | ||
Reuss | 900 | 382,766 | ||
Mecklenburg-Strelitz | 800 | 340,837 | ||
Saxe Coburg | 800 | 340,837 | ||
Waldeck-Pyrmont | 800 | 340,837 | ||
Frankfurt | 750 | 318,972 | ||
Saxe-Meiningen | 600 | 255,177 | ||
Saxe-Hildburghausen | 400 | 170,118 | ||
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen | 386 | 164,164 | ||
Hohenzollern-Hechingen | 194 | 82,507 | ||
Liechtenstein | 100 | 42,529 | ||
Subtotal | 234,530 | 100,000,000 | ||
State | Francs | |||
Spain | 5,000,000 | |||
Portugal | 2,000,000 | |||
Denmark | 2,500,000 | |||
Switzerland | 3,000,000 | |||
Subtotal | 12,500,000 | |||
Gratuity to the British and Prussian armies under Wellington and Blücher, for their exertions at Waterloo and their capture of Paris, 25 million each | 50,000,000 | |||
State | Francs | |||
For the erection of fortresses against France: | ||||
Netherlands | 60,000,000 | |||
Prussia (besides Saarlouis, valued at 50 mill.) | 20,000,000 | |||
Bavaria | 15,000,000 | |||
Spain | 7,500,000 | |||
Sardinia | 10,000,000 | |||
To strengthen Mainz | 5,000,000 | |||
To erect a new fortress of the German Confederacy on the Upper Rhine [18] | 20,000,000 | |||
Subtotal | 137,500,000 | |||
Total in francs | 700,000,000 | |||
A convention on the military line regulated all matters concerning the temporary occupation of the frontiers of France by a Coalition army of 150,000 men, conforming to Article V of the definitive treaty. The military line to be occupied, would extend along the frontiers which separated the departments of the Pas de Calais, of the North of the Ardennes, of the Meuse, of the Moselle, of the Lower Rhine, and of the Upper Rhine, from the interior of France. [19]
It was also agreed that neither the Coalition nor the French troops would occupy (unless for particular reasons and by mutual agreement), the following territories and districts: [19]
Name | Men | Name | Men |
---|---|---|---|
Calais | 1000 | Dunkirk and its forts | 1000 |
Gravelines | 500 | Douai and Fort de Scarpe | 1000 |
Bergues | 500 | Verdun | 500 |
Saint-Omer | 1500 | Metz | 3000 |
Béthune | 500 | Lauterbourg | 150 |
Montreuil | 500 | Wissembourg | 150 |
Hesdin | 250 | Lichtenberg | 150 |
Ardres | 150 | Petite Pierre | 100 |
Aire | 500 | Phalsbourg | 600 |
Arras | 1000 | Strasbourg | 3000 |
Boulogne | 300 | Sélestat | 1000 |
Saint-Venant | 300 | Neuf-Brisach and Fort Mortier | 1000 |
Lille | 3000 | Belfort | 1000 |
Within the line occupied by the Coalition army, 26 fortresses were allowed to have garrisons (see the table on the right), but without any materiel or equipment of artillery and engineer stores. [19]
France was to supply all the needs of the 150,000 Coalition troops who remained in the country. Lodging, fuel, light, provisions, and forage were to be furnished in kind, to an extent not exceeding 200,000 daily rations for men, and 50,000 daily rations for horses; and for pay, equipment, clothing, &c. [19]
France was to pay to the Coalition 50 million francs per annum during the five-year occupation: the allies, however, were content with only 30 million, on account, for the first year. The territories and fortresses definitively ceded by France, as well as the fortresses to be provisionally occupied by the Coalition troops for five years, were to be given up to them within ten days from the signature of the principal treaty, and all the Coalition forces, except 150,000 which were to remain, were to evacuate France within 21 days from that date. [19]
The direct expense entailed upon France by this convention greatly exceeded the 700 million francs of the indemnity. Estimating the value of the soldier's portion and allowances at 1½ francs, and the cavalry ration at 2 francs, the annual cost of the deliveries in kind for 200,000 portions and 50,000 rations would have been 146 million in francs, which, with the addition of 50 million franc of money per annum, formed a total of 196 million francs per year, equal to 22,370 sterling per day at the exchange rate of the time. [19]
A convention on private claims upon France assured the payment of money due by France to the subjects of the Coalition powers, in conformity with the treaty of 1814 and to the Article VIII of the 1815 peace treaty. There were twenty-six articles in the convention, which provided for the following: [19]
All these claims were to be sent in within a year after the ratification of the treaty or they would be voided (Article XVI), and committees for their liquidation were to be appointed.
Articles XVII–XIX related to the payment of the claims and their inscription in the Grand Livre (general ledger). The claims under this convention were immense, so it was impossible for the parties to have a clear idea of the necessary amount at the time of the treaty's signing. As a guarantee of payment, Article XX provided that a capital, bearing 3½ millions of francs in interest, be inscribed in the Grand Livre, the interest of which was to be received half yearly by joint-commissioners. [19]
A fourth convention related exclusively to the liquidation of the claims of British subjects on the government of France, in conformity with the Paris peace treaty of 1814, and the Article VIII of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1815. All British subjects who had suffered loss of property in France since 1 January 1791, by sequestration or confiscation by the French government, were to be indemnified. The amount of permanent stock lost was to be inscribed in the Grand Livre, and to bear interest from 22 March 1816; excepting, however, such holders as had, since 1797, voluntarily submitted to receive their dividends at a third. The same was to be the case in regard to former life annuities from the French government. [24]
Indemnification was further granted for the loss of immovable property by sequestration, confiscation, or sale; and particular regulations were laid down for ascertaining its value in the fairest possible manner. A separate account was to be kept of arrears that had accrued for all types of property, for which arrears were to be calculated at an interest of four percent per annum. Movable properly, lost through the above causes, was also to be paid for by inscriptions according to its value, with interest calculated on it at three percent per annum. From this indemnity, however, were excluded ships, cargoes, and other movable property seized in conformity to the laws of war and the prohibitory decrees. All claims of the above, or any other description, were to be given in, within three months after the date of the signing fourth convention (20 November 1815) from Europe, six months from the western colonies, and twelve months from the East Indies, &c. [24]
The claims were to be examined and decided on by a mixed commission of liquidation: and, if their votes were equal, an arbitrator would be chosen by lot from a mixed commission of arbitration. As a guarantee for the payment of claims sanctioned under this convention, there was to be inscribed in the Grand Livre, before 1 January 1816, a capital bearing 3½ millions francs of interest, in the name of a further mixed commission of English and French officers, who were to receive such interest; without, however, disposing of the same otherwise than by placing it in the public funds, at accumulating interest for the benefit of the creditors. As soon as the inscription had been effected, Britain would restore the French colonies as agreed in the treaty of 1814, including the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, which had been provisionally re-occupied by the British troops. [24]
The Swiss Confederation had been internationally recognised as an independent neutral state at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. During the Napoleonic Wars it failed to remain neutral, as some cantons had been annexed into other states and, under French influence, the Act of Mediation was signed, replacing the Swiss Confederation with the more centralised Helvetic Republic, allied to France. With the fall of Napoleon in 1814, the cantons of Switzerland started the process of writing a new, less centralised constitution. [25]
On 20 March 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, the European powers (Austria, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain and Sweden) agreed to recognise permanently an independent, neutral Switzerland, and on 27 May Switzerland acceded to this declaration.
However, during Napoleon's Hundred Days the Seventh Coalition suspended the signing of the Act of Acknowledgement and Guarantee of the perpetual Neutrality of Switzerland until after Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated; this allowed Coalition forces to pass through Swiss territory. So with Article 84 of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna dated 20 November 1815, the four major Coalition powers (Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia) and France gave their formal and authentic acknowledgement of the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland. [25] [26]
Much art had been looted from across Europe by the French armies since 1793. The First Treaty of Paris had made no demands in this respect, but the second treaty required that stolen artworks be returned to their countries of origin. The process was haphazard, as some states had ceased to exist, but the treaty was one of the first in history to require the return of war booty on a large scale.
The 1810s was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1810, and ended on December 31, 1819.
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Participants were representatives of all European powers and other stakeholders. The Congress was chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich, and was held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815.
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte (1804–1815) and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.
Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Prince of Benevento, then Prince of Talleyrand, was a French secularized clergyman, statesman, and leading diplomat. After studying theology, he became Agent-General of the Clergy in 1780. In 1789, just before the French Revolution, he became Bishop of Autun. He worked at the highest levels of successive French governments, most commonly as foreign minister or in some other diplomatic capacity. His career spanned the regimes of Louis XVI, the years of the French Revolution, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis Philippe I. Those Talleyrand served often distrusted him but, like Napoleon, found him extremely useful. The name "Talleyrand" has become a byword for crafty and cynical diplomacy.
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 May 1814, ended the war between France and the Sixth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars, following an armistice signed on 23 April between Charles, Count of Artois, and the allies. The treaty set the borders for France under the House of Bourbon and restored territories to other nations. It is sometimes called the First Peace of Paris, as another one followed in 1815.
The Hundred Days, also known as the War of the Seventh Coalition, marked the period between Napoleon's return from eleven months of exile on the island of Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815. This period saw the War of the Seventh Coalition, and includes the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War as well as several other minor campaigns. The phrase les Cent Jours was first used by the prefect of Paris, Gaspard, comte de Chabrol, in his speech welcoming the king back to Paris on 8 July.
The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory. The Napoleonic era begins roughly with Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état, overthrowing the Directory, establishing the French Consulate, and ends during the Hundred Days and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. The Congress of Vienna soon set out to restore Europe to pre-French Revolution days. Napoleon brought political stability to a land torn by revolution and war. He made peace with the Roman Catholic Church and reversed the most radical religious policies of the Convention. In 1804 Napoleon promulgated the Civil Code, a revised body of civil law, which also helped stabilize French society. The Civil Code affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult men and established a merit-based society in which individuals advanced in education and employment because of talent rather than birth or social standing. The Civil Code confirmed many of the moderate revolutionary policies of the National Assembly but retracted measures passed by the more radical Convention. The code restored patriarchal authority in the family, for example, by making women and children subservient to male heads of households.
The Concert of Europe was a general agreement among the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the 1790s. There is considerable scholarly dispute over the exact nature and duration of the Concert. Some scholars argue that it fell apart nearly as soon as it began in the 1820s when the great powers disagreed over the handling of liberal revolts in Italy, while others argue that it lasted until the outbreak of World War I and others for points in between. For those arguing for a longer duration, there is generally agreement that the period after the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War (1853–1856) represented a different phase with different dynamics than the earlier period.
In the War of the Sixth Coalition, sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, Great Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, and a number of German States defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia of 1812 in which they had been forced to support France, Prussia and Austria joined Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Portugal, and the rebels in Spain who were already at war with France.
The War of the Second Coalition was the second war targeting revolutionary France by many European monarchies, led by Britain, Austria, and Russia and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Naples and various German monarchies. Prussia did not join the coalition, while Spain supported France.
The Treaties of Tilsit, also collectively known as the Peace of Tilsit, were two peace treaties signed by French Emperor Napoleon in the town of Tilsit in July 1807 in the aftermath of his victory at Friedland, at the end of the War of the Fourth Coalition. The first was signed on 7 July, between Napoleon and Russian Emperor Alexander I, when they met on a raft in the middle of the Neman river. The second was signed with Prussia on 9 July. The treaties were made at the expense of King Frederick William III of Prussia, who had already agreed to a truce on 25 June after the Grande Armée had captured Berlin and pursued him to the easternmost frontier of his realm.
The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, held in the autumn of 1818, was a high-level diplomatic meeting of France and the four allied powers Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia, which had defeated it in 1814. The purpose was to decide the withdrawal of the army of occupation from France and renegotiate the reparations it owed. It produced an amicable settlement, whereby France refinanced its reparations debt; the Allies in a few weeks withdrew all of their troops.
Karl Philipp, Fürst zu Schwarzenberg was an Austrian Generalissimo and former Field Marshal. He first entered military service in 1788 and fought against the Turks. During the French Revolutionary War, he fought on the allied side against France and in that period rose through the ranks of the Imperial Army. During the Napoleonic Wars, he fought in the Battle of Wagram (1809), which the Austrians lost decisively against Napoleon. He had to fight for Napoleon in the Battle of Gorodechno (1812) against the Russians and won. During the War of the Sixth Coalition, he was in command of the allied army that decisively defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig (1813). He participated in the Battle of Paris (1814), which forced Napoleon to abdicate.
The Treaty of Fontainebleau was an agreement concluded in Fontainebleau, France, on 11 April 1814 between Napoleon and representatives of Austria, Russia and Prussia. The treaty was signed in Paris on 11 April by the plenipotentiaries of both sides and ratified by Napoleon on 13 April. With this treaty, the allies ended Napoleon's rule as emperor of the French and sent him into exile on Elba.
The First French Empire or French Empire and also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. It lasted from 18 May 1804 to 4 April 1814 and again briefly from 20 March 1815 to 7 July 1815, when Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.
The Constitution of the German Confederation, or German Federal Act, was the constitution for the German Confederation as set forth in the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna. Out of the 360 states of the former Holy Roman Empire, it established a confederation of 39 states under the presidency of the Emperor of Austria. In its initial form, the Constitution came into effect on 8 June 1815.
Diplomatic timeline for 1815
After the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo and the advance on Paris by the Coalition armies during the months of June and July 1815, although they besieged and took some towns and fortresses as they advanced, they bypassed many of them and detached forces to observe and reduce them. The last of the French fortresses did not capitulate until September of that year.
The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, sometimes called the Great French War, were a series of conflicts between the French and several European monarchies between 1792 and 1815. They encompass first the French Revolutionary Wars against the newly declared French Republic and from 1803 onwards the Napoleonic Wars against First Consul and later Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. They include the Coalition Wars as a subset: seven wars waged by various military alliances of great European powers, known as Coalitions, against Revolutionary France – later the First French Empire – and its allies between 1792 and 1815:
The Secret Treaty of Vienna was a defensive alliance signed on 3 January 1815 by France, the Austrian Empire and Great Britain. It took place during the Congress of Vienna, negotiations on the future of Europe following Napoleon's defeat in the War of the Sixth Coalition.