ABSTRACT
The Bourbon Monarchy has been condemned by recent historians as 'impossible'. The decision to restore the Bourbon dynasty was made by the Allies on pragmatic grounds; alternatives were seriously debated, including the Orleanist branch of the family represented by Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orleans. The Allies considered one of the many dispossessed German princes as well as Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's generals, whom Napoleon had made ruler of Sweden and who subsequently, had rebelled against him. On 6 April the rump of Napoleon's Senate, called together by Talleyrand, Napoleon's Minister of Foreign Affairs and an adroit turn-coat, made the first independent decision of its life in offering a royal throne to the comte de Provence, if he would rule in conjunction with them. The constitutional arrangements of 1814 marked a positive attempt to invent a workable combination of royal and parliamentary authority. In other respects the Restoration has been described as the Empire without Napoleon.
