The Ghent government was Louis XVIII's government-in-exile during the Hundred Days. As Napoleon I rallied his forces and headed for Paris, the sovereign made some clumsy decisions. He deprived himself of national and international support, believing himself capable of restoring the situation. Louis XVIII finally reached an impasse by calling for the defense of the charter, refusing the intervention of foreign armies, and demanding loyalty from his army, which was largely loyal to Napoleonic memory. The king left Paris on March 19, 1815, and crossed the French borders on March 23, 1815, to settle in Ghent.

The government was made up of ministers who had followed him into exile, including Blacas, Beugnot, and Jaucourt. Others who remained loyal to the sovereign held ministerial posts, such as Chateaubriand, whom the sovereign disliked. In practice, this government had no real power, as it was located outside France's borders and closely watched by the Allied powers, who doubted the Bourbons would return. Despite this, Louis XVIII still believed in his destiny as king: he created a newspaper to rival the Moniteur universel and encouraged the Chouannerie to destabilize Napoleon's power. During its few months of existence, the Ghent government was the seat of rivalries within the sovereign's entourage. The ultraroyalist fringe hardened its positions, while constitutionalists like Guizot tried to influence the sovereign.

Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, allowed Louis XVIII to consider a return to power. The foreign powers, convinced by Talleyrand, spoke out in his favor. In France, Fouché persuaded the chambers of the King's legitimacy to negotiate a peace treaty in a monarchical Europe. Louis XVIII returned to France on June 25, 1815, finally arriving in Paris on July 8, 1815. This return, marred by the excesses of the ultra-royalists, saw the start of the Second Restoration and the return of the Bourbons to the French throne until 1830.

Napoleon's return and Bourbon worries

Part of the population in favor of the return

That Napoleon should have sought to return to France is hardly extraordinary, since at the beginning of 1815 there was still a mass of Bonapartist opinion in the country, known to the authorities and the king himself from the moment he came to power. This mass was divided between soldiers, former members of the Grande Armée, who were dissatisfied with the new regime, and purchasers of national property from the Revolution, who were worried about the fate that would be reserved for them, even though the royal government showed no signs of threatening them, as the time was ripe for the reconciliation of all French people. Indeed, in his Saint-Ouen declaration, Louis XVIII said that the regime would never question the purchasers of national property, which disappointed the ultra-royalist clan.

When Louis XVIII returned to the throne, he made a series of clumsy decisions, alienating some of the population. While the authorities had an expiatory chapel built in memory of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the Grande Armée received not a single tribute, as Louis XVIII considered it pointless to praise a defeated army. Louis XVIII continued to denigrate the army's actions, even issuing an ordinance on May 12, 1814, reducing the army's strength and imposing the white flag of the kingdom of France, at the expense of the tricolor flag with which the army had fought for over 20 years. Thus, French soldiers died for their country as heroes, but were completely forgotten by the new regime. What's more, they were relegated to the margins of society because they had lost while defending the nation. The concept of nationalism completely escaped the king and his advisors, which played into the hands of Napoleon, who claimed it as his own. Many soldiers rallied to the Emperor for this reason, believing they were serving an ingrate in the King.

The population, which in some areas had to endure foreign occupation, suffered from unemployment and hardship, with no clear response from the authorities; on the other hand, Baron Louis's tax policy increased "indirect taxes" on popular products. The government's inaction in the face of the difficulties affecting the working classes and the maintenance of combined duties, including a highly unpopular tax on beverages, also contributed to the people's anger towards the regime. The people also feared a return to the Ancien Régime and the domination of the Church. Louis XVIII struggled to reassure the population, and rumors of a plot gained ground as soldiers and peasants grew nostalgic for the imperial regime, seen as a period of economic prosperity.

Flight of the "Eagle" and government reaction

Napoleon, rapidly tiring of Elba and not receiving the life annuity promised to him by the Bourbons when he went into exile, considered taking action. He began by deceiving everyone with a letter from one of his servants, intercepted by the spies of the powers at the Congress of Vienna, saying that he was returning to Naples to help Murat: "I am in the service of the first eagle in the world and therefore happy. [...] L'inconstant will leave in a few days for Naples with troops". These letters gave rise to a belief in a genuine Bonapartist plot to place Napoleon on the throne of an Italy reunited around him. The uncertainty surrounding Bonaparte's situation prompted him to act. Believing that surprise was the key to success, he secretly left Elba on February 26 and landed at Golfe Juan on March 1, 1815, with a handful of men.

The royal authorities only learned of the landing on March 5, 1815, via the telegraph. Chappe, the general administrator of the telegraph, received the message and took it immediately to Baron de Vitrolles, who in turn transmitted it to the sovereign in a sealed envelope. Louis XVIII quickly summoned Marshal Soult, who convinced him to keep silent about the events for at least twenty-four hours. Beyond this measure, Louis XVIII was particularly serene, which Vitrolles felt was a responsible attitude. The king's advisors, notably Beugnot and André, played a part in his almost blind optimism and confidence, but his entourage soon sent him serious warnings that the king did not heed. In the King's correspondence with Talleyrand, he mentions it in just a few lines, speaking above all of foreign affairs. In fact, Louis XVIII refused to acknowledge the danger. Napoleon continued his triumphal advance along the road that now bears his name, rallying, step by step, the soldiers who were supposed to come to arrest him, while the central authorities confined themselves to issuing an ordinance declaring Bonaparte a traitor on March 7.

Louis XVIII was sure of his fate, as were his ministers, who seemed certain that Napoleon would fall since the whole of Europe was united against him. Jaucourt, who was acting foreign minister in the absence of Talleyrand, who had left for the Congress of Vienna, did not speak out on the subject. Dambray, Minister of Justice, was a fervent royalist. It was he who had suggested that Louis XVIII date the charter to his nineteenth year in office. In general, almost all of Louis XVIII's ministers and royalists felt that the circumstances were right to remove Bonaparte once and for all. Vitrolles, for his part, thought that an army led by princes would be loyal to the Restoration, but this was not to be. The monarchy gradually realized that a regime without an effective police force (Beugnot abolished political spies, preventing Bonapartist plotters from being arrested) and without an army could not impose itself in the long term.

Faced with the gravity of the situation, the government made a series of mistakes. For example, the prefects, the representatives of central power in the provinces, received extremely vague instructions. On March 13, the Comte d'Artois denounced a plot by Soult and the army in general. Soult immediately tendered his resignation to the king, depriving the regime of his talents. He was replaced by Clarke. Louis XVIII set himself up as the guarantor of liberties. Following the advice of Louis and de Montesquiou, the King declared on March 12 that he was defending "public liberty, constitutional liberty, which they want to destroy", to no avail. On March 16, in a last stand, the king tried to convince the chambers of his determination to remain in power and thus defend the liberal charter: "Could I, at sixty, end my career better than by dying in its defense? Whatever happens, I won't leave my chair. The victim will be greater than the executioner". The chambers applauded him, but the speech had little effect.

International reaction

The countries taking part in the Congress of Vienna closely observed and spied on Napoleon. When they heard of Napoleon's ambitions to return to the continent, they threatened the ruler of Elba with forced exile to an island much farther from European shores, St. Helena. Napoleon never believed this threat, not only because of the unwavering support of his guard but also because of the adoration the people of Elba had for him, making exile impossible without prior resistance.

On March 7, when the news of Bonaparte's landing had just been made official by the Moniteur, the foreign ambassadors gathered at the Tuileries, where Louis XVIII declared: "Messieurs, I beg you to inform your courts that you found me well from gout and in no way worried by what has just happened. This will not disturb the rest of France or Europe." It was on this day that the Bourbon monarchy lost the support of the other European foreign powers who had placed it on the throne, and who realized that only Europe could put the brakes on Bonaparte. On March 9, the European powers offered Louis XVIII military aid, which he promptly refused. This clumsy decision caused the other powers to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. On the 18th, Louis XVIII begged the army to be loyal to him, "to spare the three hundred thousand foreigners whose arms I could no longer chain". With this declaration, Louis XVIII denigrated the foreign armies and wanted to restore the situation himself, which turned out to be a major political error, as he blocked the reinforcements that the foreign armies could have provided to defend his crown.

Foreign sovereigns were successively notified of Bonaparte's landing, the Emperor of Austria on March 7, the King of Prussia on March 9 and the King of the United Kingdom on March 10. On the 11th, The Times headlined: "The return of the miserable adventurer". Mutual distrust between the European sovereigns of the Sixth Coalition slowed Metternich's plans to stop the Emperor on March 7. It was finally on the 13th that the powers that had signed the first Treaty of Paris met in Vienna, at the congress that had been held since 1814. The congress aimed to reorganize Europe, but territorial and ideological disputes dragged on, and the stakes for Europe of an eventual agreement. Napoleon's return called into question the length of the congress and its inability to decide, and it was this return that united the European powers behind a common enemy, as the Emperor of Austria put it: "Fortunately, it is now that we are all together". The congress deplored Bonaparte's action as illegal, in violation of the 1814 treaty: "By thus breaking the convention which had established him on the island of Elba, Buonaparte destroys the only legal title to which his existence was attached ".

Louis XVIII in exile

An inevitable escape