When the fighting resumed, with Austria installed against France, the French won again, at Dresden. However, the Allied forces scored victories of their own–at Großbeeren, Katzbach, Dennewitz, and (most significantly) Kulm. Many at this time and since have referred to the War of the Sixth Coalition as the War of German Liberation. A significant part of that liberation came at the Battle of Leipzig (right), in Saxony, on Oct. 16–19. Also referred to as the Battle of the Nations, it featured the highest number of troops on any one battlefield in Europe until World War I. Outnumbered nearly 2–1, Bonaparte still managed to prolong the fighting and nearly win it. Allied strength and tactics were too much, and French troops retreated across the Elster and then the Rhine. The October 1813 Battle of Hanau, a French victory, preceded a retreat by French troops back behind French borders. The one exception to this was the French Ⅻ Corps, commanded by Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout; that force had taken the city of Hamburg and withstood several attempts to besiege it. When Bonaparte and the rest of the imperial army went west, Davout and his corps stayed in Hamburg.

Leaders of the major powers met in Frankfurt; the terms that they offered to Napoleon became known as the Frankfurt Proposals. Allied leaders demanded that France resume its "natural boundaries," meaning giving up all territory won in Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain. Even though the proposal allowed France to keep control of Belgium, Savoy, and the Rhineland and allowed Bonaparte to keep his imperial title and throne, he refused the offer and the war continued.

Just a few weeks later, on November 9, 1813, a joint Portuguese-U.K. force, having scored a knockout blow against French troops in Spain at the Battle of Vitoria in June, crossed over the Pyrenees and invaded France. Allied troops were soon invading France from the north.

Once Allied forces were within France's traditional borders, the end came rather quickly. Even the vaunted Napoleon could not compete with overwhelming numbers of men and weapons arrayed against him and his beleaguered, dispirited men. After a brief series of French victories in the Six Days' campaign, Allied troops entered Paris on March 30, 1814. The Allied force that had invaded from the south seized Toulouse after a four-day battle. On April 11, Bonaparte abdicated the throne but only after his marshals mutinied and demanded that he do so, refusing to follow any more of his orders. On that day, France signed a treaty with all countries but the U.K. That pact, the Treaty of Fontainebleau, ended the war except for the fighting that was still going on in southern France.

Toulouse

Paris

Abdication