Marshal Davout and the Second Bourbon Restoration

Abstract

The second abdication of the Emperor Napoleon plunged the French nation into confusion. Its defeated army was retreating in disorder from the battlefields of Belgium, its government was undecided upon a choice for his successor,l and as the news of these eventful days spread over the stunned countryside the threat of civil war heightened. Louis XVIII had been biding his time in Belgium while waiting for his fate and that of the French people to be decided on the field of battle. Hardly had the news of Waterloo arrived at Ghent (June 19) when the exiled court began packing for its inglorious return to Paris. However, a second restoration of the House of Henry IV was neither automatic nor assured by the removal of Napoleon. The army was Bonapartist almost to the man; and if the nation shed few tears for the departed emperor, it was divided with respect to the return of the king. The principal architect of the Second Restoration may well have been Joseph Fouche, Duke of Otranto, but the man who made it virtually bloodless, who prevented civil war, and who made possible peace with the allies by controlling the military, was Louis Davout. Marshal Davout, Duke of Auerstadt, Prince of Eckmiihl,2 was a