Why wasn't Napoleon discredited after 1814?

Really?

Absolute monarchs had been advancing low-born people since the Middle Ages. For a couple of familiar examples, Cardinal Wolsey was the son of a butcher, Thomas Cromwell of, iirc, a brewer. But no one praises Henry VIII for employing them.

Because those were exceptional examples, not a systematic practice.

Soldiers loved Napoleon because they knew he would reward competence and loyalty in ways other nations wouldn't.
 
I think Napoleon was able to cultivate a "stab-in-the-back"-myth in 1814. He had still a functional (but badly outnumbered) army, so there was theoretical still the chance that he could drove the Allies , but the mutiny of his Marshalls prevented this.

Not at all. Nobody doubted France had been defeated. The russian troops were stationed at Paris. Hostilitiez did not end just when the french army crossed the Rhine back after the battle of Leipzig.
 
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