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Napoléon crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David
Napoléon attempted to enforce a Europe-wide commercial boycott of Britain called the " Continental System". He invaded Spain and installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as king there. The Spanish rose in revolt, which Napoléon was unable to suppress. The British invaded Spain through Portugal in 1808 and, with the aid of the Spanish nationalists, slowly drove out the French. While France was engaged in Spain, Austria attacked in Germany, but after initial success suffered defeat at the Battle of Wagram ( 6 July 1809).
Alexander I of Russia had become distrustful of Napoléon and refused to co-operate with him against the British. In 1812, Napoléon invaded Russia. Napoléon ignored the advice of the Poles, who predicted long-term war rather than a quick victorious campaign. They proposed to retrieve former Polish areas from Russian hands gradually and build a base for further war there. As the Poles predicted, the Russians under Kutuzov, who declared a Patriotic War, retreated instead of giving battle. Outside Moscow on 12 September, the Battle of Borodino took place. The Russians retreated and Napoléon was able to enter Moscow, assuming that Alexander I would negotiate peace. Moscow began to burn and within the month, fearing loss of control in France, Napoléon left Moscow. The French Grand Army suffered greatly in the course of a ruinous retreat; the Army had begun as over 600,000 men, but in the end fewer than 10,000 crossed the Berezina River (November 1812) to escape. Encouraged by this dramatic reversal, several nations again took up arms against France. The decisive defeat of the French came at the Battle of Leipzig, also called "The Battle of the Nations" ( 16- 19 October 1813).
In 1814 Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed an alliance against Napoléon. Although the defence of France included many battles which the French won, the pressure became overwhelming. Paris was occupied on 31 March 1814. The marshals asked Napoléon to abdicate, and he did so on 6 April in favour of his son. The Allies, however, demanded unconditional surrender and Napoléon abdicated again, unconditionally, on 11 April. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau the victors exiled the Corsican to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean 20 km off the coast of Italy. They let him keep the title of "Emperor" but restricted his empire to that tiny island.
Napoléon tried to poison himself and failed; on the voyage to Elba he was almost assassinated. In France, the royalists had taken over and restored King Louis XVIII to power. On Elba, Napoléon became concerned about his wife and, more especially, his son, in the hands of the Austrians. The French government refused to pay his allowance and he heard rumours that he was about to be banished to a remote island in the Atlantic. Napoléon escaped from Elba on 26 February 1815 and returned to the mainland on 1 March 1815. The French armies sent to stop him received him instead as leader. He arrived in Paris on 20 March with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000 and governed for a Hundred Days.
Napoléon's final defeat came at the hands of the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo in present-day Belgium on 18 June 1815.
Off the port of Rochefort, Napoléon made his formal surrender while on board HMS Bellerophon on 15 July 1815.
Napoléon's exile to Elba is the inspiration for the famous palindrome: "Able was I ere I saw Elba."
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