From the British perspective, the Treaty of Ghent wasn't even the most important treaty signed in 1814.

That's because America's War of 1812 was a footnote in British military history. The main event starred Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general and emperor.

You might remember Napoleon as the guy who sold half of the United States to Thomas Jefferson in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase. Britain was at war with Napoleon during the first decade of the 1800s, and this conflict was a direct cause of the 1812 sideshow in North America. Most of the British armed forces were tied up fighting Napoleon, and that was all that gave the U.S. a fighting chance in 1812.

An allied coalition of the British, Russians, Austrians, and Prussians finally defeated Napoleon in Paris in 1814, and signed what became known as the Treaty of Paris, or the First Peace of Paris. This treaty restored the French monarchy that had been overthrown during the French Revolution. Napoleon went into exile in Elba shortly before U.S.-British negotiations began at Ghent, giving rise to the awesome palindrome: "Able was I ere I saw Elba."

The prolonged struggle of the Napoleonic conflicts contributed to war fatigue in Britain, which is one reason the British ambassadors dropped their hardline demands in Ghent in favor of wrapping up the War of 1812 quickly. Even though the Americans had nothing to do with the Peace of Paris, it affected them as much as their own war.

Like the Treaty of Ghent, the Peace of Paris had territorial give-backs and commitments to end the slave trade (but not slavery) in France. Unlike Ghent, it included changes in government—the restoration of the French monarchy. Nobody in Ghent was messing with the other guy's chain of command.

The King's men had good timing: Napoleon briefly rose to power again in 1815, reopening the European conflict. He met his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June of 1815. He was exiled again, this time to the island of St. Helena, off the African coast.

Historians are still trying to come up with a palindrome for that.