Second Treaty of Paris — 20 novembre 1815

France lost the additions of 1814, paid an indemnity of seven hundred million and endured the occupation of seventeen fortresses by one hundred and fifty thousand Allied troops for five years. The works of art seized across Europe were returned, emptying the galleries of the imperial Louvre. The Hundred Days were paid for with a punitive peace, whose political weight the Restoration would carry.

The difference from 1814

A year earlier the allies had treated France as a country freed from a tyrant: no indemnity, no occupation, the frontiers of 1792. The Hundred Days had shown that part of the country had followed Napoleon without hesitating, and the argument of an innocent France no longer held.

The second treaty, signed in Paris on 20 November 1815, was that of a country twice defeated. It was negotiated over five months, the Prussians demanding Alsace and Lorraine; it was Alexander I and London who opposed them.

Territory, money, occupation

France returned to the frontiers of 1790, losing the additions of 1814: part of Savoy, Landau, Saarlouis, Philippeville, Marienbourg. The loss was limited but symbolic — the Republic and the Empire would have kept nothing.

She paid seven hundred million francs in indemnity and maintained an army of occupation of a hundred and fifty thousand men holding seventeen fortresses in the north and east, for up to five years. Early payment, financed by loans placed in London, would allow it to end as soon as 1818, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle.

The Louvre emptied

The most visible clause was the restitution of works of art. In 1814 the seizures had been left at the Louvre; in 1815 Wellington and Blücher demanded their return, and foreign commissioners came to take them down themselves before the eyes of the Paris public.

The horses of Saint Mark's went back to Venice, the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere to Rome. Several hundred works nonetheless stayed in France, for want of a claim or of agreement. The universal museum the regime had wanted was over: the Louvre became a national museum again.