Duke of Vicenza, Foreign Minister
Armand de Caulaincourt
France 9 December 1773 – 19 February 1827
In 1814: French plenipotentiary at Châtillon
He had been ambassador to Russia, and he had ridden with Napoleon through the retreat from Moscow. At Châtillon he pleaded with the Emperor to accept peace while it was still on offer.
In April he negotiated the abdication and the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and he was with Napoleon on the night of the poison. His memoirs are among the most valuable accounts of the Empire’s fall.
On the timeline
In the writing of the time
- “A thunderbolt alone could have saved us” · Napoleon, on St Helena (reported)
Sources
- Wikidata (dates of birth and death, portrait identifiers)
- F. Loraine Petre, Napoleon at Bay, 1814 (London: John Lane, 1914) · Public domain. The main source for strengths, losses and movements on this site.
- Images: Wikimedia Commons. The licence for each image is checked at build time and linked from its caption.