As a result, the victorious Coalition negotiated the Treaty of Paris, under which Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba and the borders of France were returned to where they had been in 1792.

When this campaign resulted in the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée, the two states took advantage of the situation by forming a Sixth Coalition against France.

[1] In late December 1813, three Coalition armies started to cross the Rhine:[1] To meet these forces, Napoleon, by the senatus consultum of 9 October 1813, called up the conscript classes of 1814 and 1815.

Blücher's headquarters were surprised and he himself nearly captured by a sudden rush of French troops (Battle of Brienne), learning at the same time that the emperor in person was at hand.

About noon on 2 February Napoleon engaged them in Battle of La Rothière; but the weather was terrible, and the ground so heavy that his favourite artillery, the mainstay of his whole system of warfare, was useless and in the drifts of snow which at intervals swept across the field, the columns lost their direction and many were severely handled by the Cossacks.

But on 4 February Blücher, chafing at this inaction, obtained the permission of his own sovereign, Frederick William III of Prussia, to transfer his line of operations to the valley of the Marne; Pahlen's corps of Cossacks were assigned to him to cover his left and maintain communication with the Austrians.

[1] Believing himself secure behind this screen, he advanced from Vitry along the roads leading down the valley of the Marne, with his columns widely separated for convenience of subsistence and shelter the latter being almost essential in the terrible weather prevailing.

Blücher himself on the night of 7/8 February was at Sézanne, on the exposed flank so as to be nearer to his sources of intelligence, and the rest of his army were distributed in four small corps at or near Épernay, Montmirail and Étoges; reinforcements also were on their way to join him and were then about Vitry.

[7] Napoleon then turned on the main body of the Army of Silesia and on 14 February defeated Blücher in Battle of Vauchamps near Étoges, pursuing the latter towards Vertus.

These disasters compelled the retreat of the whole Silesian army, and Napoleon, leaving detachments with marshals Mortier and Marmont to deal with them, hurried back to Troyes.

[8] On hearing that Reims had fallen to a Coalition corps under the command of the Russian General Saint-Priest, Napoleon crossed in front of Blücher's force.

However, after Arcis-sur-Aube, Napoleon realised that he could no longer continue with his current strategy of defeating the Coalition armies in detail and decided to change his tactics.

He had actually started on the execution of this plan when a letter to Empress Marie-Louise outlining his intention to move on the Coalition lines of communications was intercepted by Cossacks in Blücher's army on 22 March and hence his projects were exposed to his enemies.

[9][10] The Coalition commanders held a council of war at Pougy on the 23 March and initially decided to follow Napoleon, but the next day Tsar Alexander I of Russia and King Frederick William III of Prussia along with their advisers reconsidered, and realising the weakness of their opponent (and perhaps actuated by the fear that Duke of Wellington from Toulouse might, after all, reach Paris first), decided to march to Paris (then an open city), and let Napoleon do his worst to their lines of communications.

The Battle of Paris ended when the French commanders, seeing further resistance to be hopeless, surrendered the city on 31 March, just as Napoleon, with the wreck of the Guards and a mere handful of other detachments, was hurrying across the rear of the Austrians towards Fontainebleau to join them.