What was a significant effect of Louis xviii return to power in 1814?

Answer 1

When Napoleon went into exile to the island of Elba, Louis XVIII and his family returned to the throne of his ancestors, accompanied by what looked a wave of popularity. It seemed that the Bourbon lilies had finally triumphed over the revolutionary tricolor tied with its unpleasant associations of bloody terror and Liberty, Fraternity and Equality.

King Louis XVIII was a mediocre personality, well-meaning but obtuse that could not eradicate the nationalist forces released in 1789 by the revolution, no more than he could control his followers. With him returned a crowd of former emigrated, clergy and nobles dispossessed, who had fled abroad during the Terror, and now rRequested the restoration of their privileges and properties, eager to bring back the good old pre-revolutionary times.

While Napoleon was busy tidying up his tiny principality and the Congress of Vienna, in the spare time between the endless sequence of balls and celebrations, was busy reshaping a disordered Europe, the popularity enjoyed by the Bourbon in the first period of their restoration decreased

quickly.

In many ways the new French regime was more liberal and enlightened than the last, because the demands of total war had cancelled under the Empire the civil rights and these were now guaranteed by the Charter of Bourbon.

Serious attempts were also carried to restore the battered French economy, but these wise measures were not sufficient to allay the suspicions growing among the population, who considered the king, his family and the former emigrated just a collection of puppets, now protected by the France's enemies, whose task was that of destroy the ideal of the Revolution and restore sooner or later a reactionary power.

Furthermore there were two other social classes which were suspicious or dissatisfied:

the farmers, who suspected that the king would agree to the repeated claim of the nobles, former proprietors of the lands, in order that at least a portion of their former propriety were to be returned to them;

the disbanded soldiers, discontented because at request of the victor powers, the French Army had been reduced to a shadow of what it had been. Many of them were suffering from hunger and, generally, the majority were facing a hard life because of lack of a job or extremely lower wages.

The whole was the fertile ground that served to prepare the sudden and undetected return of Napoleon from Elba.