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Introduction
Accompanied out of Russia and pursued across German lands, Napoleon and France were encircled and invaded in early 1814. Despite a military performance as gifted as the First Italian campaign, the First Emperor was to be forced into abdication and exile on Elba.
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Documents
In the Fondation Napoléon Digital Library
– Volume XVII of L’histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire on the year 1814: L’invasion ; Brienne et Montmirail ; 1ère abdication, by Adolphe Thiers (in French)
19th-century Testimonies and Documents, on Gallica (French National Library – BnF)
– Un négociateur suisse du comte d’Artois pendant la campagne de France (mars 1814) : épisode des origines de la Restauration by Casimir Folletête, 1888 (in French)
– Résumé historique de la campagne de Napoléon Ier en France contre l’invasion de 1814, dans les arrondissements de Château-Thierry et d’Epernay, G. P., 1864 (in French)
– Les sièges de Soissons en 1814, ou Dissertation sur le récit de la campagne de France, en ce qui concerne la ville de Soissons : publié en 1860 dans le tome XVIIe de l'”Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire”, de M. Thiers, by Maxime Laurendeau, 1868 (in French)
– Souvenirs de la campagne de France : manuscrit de 1814 (Nouvelle édition publiée avec une préface), by Baron Agathon-Jean-François Fain, 1914 (in French)
Maps of the French Campaign, on Gallica (French National Library – BnF)
– Campaign of 1814. [Departements of Ardennes, Marne, Aube, Aisne and Seine-et-Marne]
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Timeline
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Images
Ernest Meissonier, The French Campaign, 1814
Read the presentation of this painting in our “Painting of the Month” section, and Juliette Glickman’s commentary of this painting (in French) on napoleon.org.
Ernest Meissonier, Napoleon in 1814
After accompanying the French army in the Austro-Italian War of 1859, Meissionier abandoned the small, Dutch 17th-century genre subjects for which he had become known and turned with even greater success to depicting events in the career of Napoleon I. In this small painting commissioned by the subject’s nephew, Prince Napoleon, the emperor is portrayed in a forbidding landscape just after his last, hard-won victory in the 1814 French campaign that was fought at Arcis-sur-Aube, near Troyes: 23,000 French troops withstood the onslaught of 90,000 Austrians, but were unable to capitalize on their victory.(Presentation text from the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, USA), where the painting is kept).
A selection of works presented on the French National Museum Website (RMN)
– The Day before the Battle of Montmirail, 10 February, 1814 (painting by Ferdinand Joseph Gueldry)– The Battle of Montmirail (painting by Horace Vernet)
– The Battle of Montmirail, 11 February, 1814, at 4pm (drawing, watercolour by Siméon Jean Antoine Fort)
– The Russian Prisoners marching down the Boulevard Saint-Martin in Paris after the Battle of Montmirail, 17 February, 1814 (drawing, watercolour by Étienne-Jean Delécluze)
– Battle of Château-Thierry, 12 February, 1814, at 3 or 4pm (watercolour by Siméon Jean Antoine Fort)
– Battle of Vauchamp, 14 February, 1814, at noon (watercolour by Théodore Jung)
– Battle of Toulouse, 10 April, 1814, at 8 or 9am (watercolour by Théodore Jung)
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Bibliography
Books in English, available online
– John Holland Rose, Napoleon, A Life: Chapter XXXVI: “From the Rhine to the Seine”, 1910
– Henry Houssaye, Napoleon and the Campaign of 1814, London: Hugh Rees Ltd, 1914
– A. Mikhailofsky-Danilefsky, History of the Campaign in France in the year 1815, London: Smith Elder and Co., 1839
– F. Loraine Petre, Napoleon at Bay 1814, London: John Lane, 1914Latest publications on the French Campaign
– Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Napoléon et la campagne de France. 1814, Armand Colin, 2014 (in French, but click on the link for our presentation in English)
– Yves Jégo, La campagne de France de 1814, Tallandier, 2013 (in French)
– Jean-Philippe Rey, 1814, derniers combats pour l’Empire. Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Savoie, Éditions du Poutan, 2014 (in French)– Thierry Lentz, Les vingt jours de Fontainebleau, Perrin, 2014 (in French, but click on the link for our presentation in English)
– Un tsar à Paris, Marie-Pierre Rey, Flammarion, 2014
1814: The French Campaign
Accompanied out of Russia and pursued across German lands, Napoleon and France were encircled and invaded in early 1814. Despite a military performance as gifted as the First Italian campaign, the First Emperor was to be forced into abdication and exile on Elba.
