Return of the King: The Bourbon Restoration | History Today - 0 views
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France Monarch Restoration Europe Napoleon Louis XVIII
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On June 18th, the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end Napoleon's attempted comeback in the Hundred Days
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At this point, two centuries ago, the victorious Allies – Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia – would determine the fate of France
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The Austrian chancellor, Metternich, came from Vienna, Tsar Alexander from St Petersburg and, from Berlin, the 72-year-old Prussian Marshal Blücher
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Since both the republican and imperial models were discredited and unacceptable to the victorious Allies, a royal restoration was inevitable; Wellington warned that there would be no peace in Europe unless the Bourbons mounted the throne again. The Congress of Vienna, held to define European frontiers after two decades of war, reversed Napoleon's conquests but was otherwise generous to France
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The new monarch, Louis XVIII, had made a poor fist of it on his first return from exile in Britain in May 1814. He surrounded himself with appointees who had been out of government business for more than two decades and the first restoration was brought to an abrupt end by the Hundred Days. Louis fled once more, to return three weeks after Waterloo
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Louis Stanislas Xavier Bourbon, grandson of Louis XV and brother of Louis XVI, became heir to the throne when Louis' son died in prison in 1795
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Ignoring the king's desire for national unity, royalists in various parts of the country exacted their revenge for events since the Revolution of 1789
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The Allies imposed financial indemnities on an economy that had been weakened by the demands of Napoleon's constant war-making and the effects of the British naval blockade
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At the end of November 1815 a white-faced Richelieu signed the definitive peace agreement dictated by the Allies, lamenting that 'all is finished (by) this fatal treaty'
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Russia, Prussia and Austria proclaimed their Holy Alliance and Britain joined them in the Quadruple Alliance
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Then came 15 years wandering around Europe, including two in remote Courland in the Baltic, after which he came to rest for seven years in England
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France was on its way to being re-integrated into the European system. This reflected the country's continental importance; Europe could not function without it. The path to national recovery was faster than might have been expected in the summer of 1815
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the Hexagon between the Alps and the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Channel could no longer aspire to dominate Europe as it had sought to do under Louis XIV and Bonaparte