← history
Read stories →
May 30, 1814

Treaty of Paris (1814)

First Peace of Paris signed, establishing peace and France's 1792-based frontiers

Politics Wars & Conflicts
Treaty of Paris (1814) View full image ↗
Illustration generated by Ideogram 4 (fp8) (20 steps, 1216x832) on an NVIDIA RTX 5090 · 2026-08-27
How was this image made?

The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.

Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗

Napoleon cannot have been exiled on this date. He had landed on Elba twenty-six days earlier and was already running his principality.

30 May 1814: parallel treaties, one peace

Bourbon France and the Coalition powers concluded a definitive peace at Paris on 30 May 1814 — not through one document signed jointly by everyone, but through parallel and substantially similar instruments. The Anglo-French treaty declared peace and friendship from that day.

Talleyrand signed for Louis XVIII's France, Castlereagh for Britain, Metternich for Austria, Nesselrode for Russia and Hardenberg for Prussia.

"The 1792 borders," and the exceptions right underneath

Article II retained France's limits as they had existed on 1 January 1792. Article III then granted a set of specified additions and boundary adjustments, which is why the familiar shorthand is only approximate; France renounced sovereignty beyond the new frontier.

The colonial articles restored many French possessions while leaving Malta, Tobago, Saint Lucia, Mauritius, Rodrigues and the Seychelles to Britain, returning Guadeloupe to France and giving the French part of Santo Domingo back to Spain.

What it handed on to Vienna

The treaty declared Germany's states independent and federated, Switzerland independent, Holland enlarged under the House of Orange, and Italy outside Austrian possessions composed of sovereign states — with the details left to a coming congress.

Article XXXII required all belligerent powers to send plenipotentiaries to Vienna within two months; it did not require the settlement itself to be finished in that time. Inhabitants of transferred territories were given six years to dispose of their property and move.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

  • The collective label 'Treaty of Paris' can obscure that France concluded separate, substantially parallel instruments with the allied powers rather than one document signed jointly by every power.
  • The shorthand 'France returned to its 1792 borders' is only approximate: the treaty used 1 January 1792 as its baseline but expressly granted several additions and boundary modifications.
  • The additional slave-trade provision cited here belongs to the Anglo-French instrument; parallel treaties could contain differing additional provisions.

Checked against