The Second Bourbon Restoration was the period of French history during which the House of Bourbon returned to power after the fall of the First French Empire in 1815. The Second Bourbon Restoration lasted until the July Revolution of 26 July 1830. Louis XVIII and Charles X, brothers of the executed King Louis XVI and uncles of the tortured King Louis XVII, successively mounted the throne and instituted a conservative government intended to restore the proprieties, if not all the institutions, of the Ancien Régime. Exiled supporters of the monarchy returned to France but were unable to reverse most of the changes made by the French Revolution. Exhausted by decades of war, the nation experienced a period of internal and external peace, stable economic prosperity and the preliminaries of industrialization.
The allied armies parading on the Place de la Concorde, 1814
Allegory of the Return of the Bourbons on 24 April 1814: Louis XVIII Lifting France from Its Ruins by Louis-Philippe Crépin
Louis XVIII making a return at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris on August 29th, 1814
Louis XVIII, asked if he intends to include anyone from the House of Bonaparte in his royal services, responds "I will take none." (18 July 1815)
Congress of Vienna
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The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Participants were representatives of all European powers and other stakeholders. The Congress was chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich, and was held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815.
Architect of the Congress System, Prince von Metternich, chancellor of the Austrian Empire from 1821 until the Revolution in 1848. Painting by Lawrence (1815)
Talleyrand proved an able negotiator for the defeated French.
Marquis of Labrador, Spanish Ambassador to the Congress of Vienna – Painting by Vicente López Portaña