Editing Unconditional surrender (section)

===Napoleon Bonaparte===
When [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] escaped from his enforced exile on the island of [[Elba]], one of the steps that the delegates of the European powers at the [[Congress of Vienna]] took was to issue a statement on 13 March 1815 [[s:Declaration at the Congress of Vienna|declaring Napoleon Bonaparte]] to be an outlaw. The text includes the following paragraphs:

{{quotation|
By thus breaking [[Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814)|the convention]] which had established him in the island of Elba, Bonaparte destroys the only legal title on which his existence depended, and by appearing again in France, with projects of confusion and disorder, he has deprived himself of the protection of the law, and has manifested to the universe that there can be neither peace nor truce with him.

The powers consequently declare, that Napoleon Bonaparte has placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations; and that, as an enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, he has rendered himself liable to public vengeance.|Plenipotentiaries of the high powers who signed the [[Treaty of Paris (1814)]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Edward |last=Baines |year=1818 |title=History of the Wars of the French Revolution, from the breaking out of the wars in 1792, to, the restoration of general peace in 1815 (of II)|volume=II |publisher=Longman, Rees, Orme and Brown |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=GMxLAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA3-PA433 433]}}</ref> }}

Consequently, as Napoleon was considered an [[outlaw]] when he surrendered to [[Frederick Lewis Maitland (Rear Admiral)|Captain Maitland]] of {{HMS|Bellerophon|1786|6}} at the end of the [[Hundred Days]], he was not protected by military law or international law as a head of state and so the British were under no legal obligation to either accept his surrender or to spare his life.<ref>{{cite book|last=MacDonald |first=John |year=1823 |chapter=Character of Bonaparte |editor-last=Urban |editor-first=Sylvanus |title=The Gentleman's magazine (part 1) |volume=93 |series=16th of the New Series |publisher=F. Jefferies  |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=IAEVHuU8IxIC&pg=PA596 569]}}</ref> However, they did so to prevent him from being a [[martyr]] and exiled him to the remote [[South Atlantic]] island of [[Saint Helena]].{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}