Restoration, The. After Napoleon's abdication (6 April 1814), the Bourbon monarchy was restored to the throne in the person of Louis XVIII. This is usually called the first Restoration, since it was interrupted by Napoleon's escape from Elba and return to Paris (20 March 1815); the second Restoration began with his abdication (22 June 1815) and Louis's return to Paris. After Louis's death (16 September 1824), his brother Charles X succeeded to the throne. The reign of the Bourbons ended with the Revolution of July 1830, provoked by the king's reactionary policies and disregard for representative government. Charles abdicated on 2 August 1830 [see July Monarchy].
This period saw the introduction of parliamentary government on the constitutional basis of the Charter (‘La Charte’) proclaimed by the king on 4 June 1814. The right to vote was based on wealth, which was calculated by the amount of direct taxation paid; it has been calculated that one out of every 100 adult Frenchmen possessed this privilege. A chamber of peers was appointed by the monarch. In order to be eligible for election as a député, one had to be male, at least 40 years old, and paying a considerable sum in direct taxation. This meant that in some parts of provincial France only 10 men in a département might be eligible. The system was beset by fraud; one of the aims of the Liberal opposition was to make it more effectively parliamentary.
The Restoration was marked by a great intellectual, literary, and artistic activity [see Romanticism]. According to one estimate, whilst in 1812 some 4, 648 books were published within the extended frontiers of Imperial France, in 1825, within the restricted frontiers of Restoration France, some 7, 542 were published. Among these publications, the increase in the number of historical works is significant (their number more than tripled), and historians such as Barante, Guizot, Thiers, and Thierry were among the most distinguished writers of the period.
But at first it was the scientists who most impressed observers from other countries. The mathematician Augustin Cauchy (1789-1857), the engineer Augustin Fresnel (1788-1827), the inventor of thermodynamics Sadi Carnot (1796-1832), were only a few of a famous group of scientists presided over by the Secrétaire Perpétuel of the Académie des Sciences, Cuvier. Many intellectual movements, such as socialism, economic liberalism, eclecticism, and positivism originated during the years of the Restoration.
— Douglas Johnson
