Paris, Treaty of 1814

a treaty signed in Paris on May 30 between France and the members of the Sixth Anti-French Coalition (Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia). Sweden, Spain, and Portugal signed the treaty at a later date.

The treaty reduced France to its borders of Jan. 1, 1792. An international congress (the Congress of Vienna, 1814–15) was to resolve the problem of the territories that France was forced to give up in order to return to its 1792 borders. The treaty restored the independence of Holland, Switzerland, the German principalities (which formed a union), and the Italian states (except for territories granted to Austria). The navigation of the Rhine and the Schelde was declared to be free to all nations. France regained most of the colonial possessions it had lost during the Napoleonic Wars.