Allies Enter Paris

March 31, 1814

Tsar Alexander rode into Paris at the head of Russian, Prussian and Austrian troops while Napoleon, outmaneuvered, stewed at Fontainebleau. Within a week he abdicated and accepted exile on Elba, a tiny Tuscan island with a pension and a toy army. Louis XVIII came home in a British carriage. Napoleon's marshals, exhausted and enriched, kissed the hand of a Bourbon king and pretended they had always been royalists.