ABSTRACT
The brief period of the Bourbon Restoration was the moment when France tried, and failed, to return to normality after a quarter of a century of revolution and war. It may seem in retrospect, after so many subsequent revolutions and wars, that there was in fact no normality to return to: that hatreds were too bitter and expectations too high, and that France had become ungovernable. Or was it rather that blunders were made and opportunities for reconciliation missed: that France was not ungovernable, but badly governed?
