aris. The allied armies entered
Paris on March 31, and on April 11, after trying to poison himself,
Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau. He retired to Elba, which was
assigned to him as a mimic kingdom. Talleyrand now became dominant in
Paris, and the Bourbons were restored, Louis XVIII being crowned King of
France. Ferdinand VII resumed power in Spain. By the Treaty of Paris,
France retained her old territory, received back the colonies captured by
England, kept Alsace-Lorraine, and much of the plunder gathered by
Napoleon. Russia held Poland and Finland.

In June the Americans, under Brown, seized Fort Erie and fought indecisive
actions with the British at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. In August a
British force, under Ross and Cockburn, landed in Maryland, defeated the
Americans at Bladensburg, and advanced to Washington. Madison and his
cabinet fled. The defenseless city was entered by the enemy; the White
House and uncompleted Capitol were burned, and the government stores and
buildings at Alexandria were destroyed. An attack on Baltimore was
repulsed, inspiring Key's "Star-Spangled Banner." On Lake Champlain,
McDonough captured four vessels of a British squadron and put the rest to
flight. Two hundred men from a British fleet on its way to New Orleans
attempted to board the privateer General Armstrong (Samuel Reid, captain),
in the neutral harbor of Fayal. They were repulsed. Three British vessels
closed in, and after a plucky fight Reid and his ninety men scuttled the
General Armstrong, and escaped, having seriously damaged the British
fleet. Jackson took Pensacola, in Florida, from the British; he also
killed eight hundred Creeks for their massacre of the inhabitants of Fort
Mims, and finally broke the power of the Indians in Alabama and Georgia by
his victory at Horseshoe Bend. During all this time New England had held
practically aloof from the war with the British, giving little assistance
to the other States. On Christmas Day a treaty of peace between England
and the United States was signed at Ghent.

Norway accepted the King of Sweden as ruler--an arrangement only recently
abandoned. The Bourbons entered on reprisals in France and Spain, having
"learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Jesuits permitted to return to
France. Despotism renewed in the German states. The Prince Regent of
England excluded his wife, Caroline, from court. Count Rumford, scientist,
and the ex-Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, d