Treaty of Paris (1815)

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, Napoleon was forced 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).

The total financial burden on France, including interest and upkeep for 150,000 soldiers, approached 1.7 billion francs, the most expensive war reparation ever paid by a country (in proportion to its GDP). 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.

Definitive treaty

thumb|In red, territories left to France in 1814 but removed after the Treaty of Paris of 1815.

thumb|A map of the Eastern boundary of France to illustrate the Second Peace of Paris 20th Nov. 1815

thumb|Southeast frontier of France after the Treaty of Paris, 1815

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"). Thanks to Castlereagh, who now occupied the dominant position that had been held by the Tsar of Russia in 1814, and whose primary concern was to avoid the alienation of the French toward the restored Bourbons, the treaty of 1815 was only moderately harsher than the Treaty of 1814, which had been negotiated through the manoeuvre of Talleyrand.

With the new treaty, France lost the territorial gains of the Revolutionary armies in 1790–1792, 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 Republic of Mulhouse, which France was allowed to keep, but minus a few patches of territory along the northern border, including the former duchy of Bouillon, annexed to France 1795, Landau and the Saarlouis exclave, which had been French since 1697, as well as six communes in the Pays de Gex which were ceded to the Canton of Geneva so that it be connected to the rest of Switzerland. France was now also ordered to pay 700 million francs in indemnities, in five yearly instalments, and to maintain at its own expense a Coalition army of occupation of 150,000 soldiers in the eastern border territories of France, from the English Channel to the border with Switzerland, for a maximum of five years. 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.

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" 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", whereby the treaty became a part of the public law by which Europe, with the exclusion of the Ottoman Empire, established "relations from which a system of real and permanent balance of power in Europe is to be derived".

Article on the slave trade

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".

Convention on pecuniary indemnity

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.

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.

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: to be regulated by a separate convention between commissioners from that city and those of Louis XVIII. The matter was settled when the French government agreed to pay compensation in a special convention signed by the parties on 27 October 1816.

the payment of a claim of upwards of forty million francs to the Counts of Bentheim and Steinfurt.

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 millions of francs in interest, be inscribed in the Grand Livre, the interest of which was to be received half yearly by joint-commissioners.

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.

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.

Return of looted art

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.

Treaty of Paris (1815)

Definitive treaty

Article on the slave trade

Convention on pecuniary indemnity

Return of looted art

See also

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading