After his return from the
Isle of Elba and his entry into
Paris on 20 March 1815,
Napoleon Bonaparte returned to the throne. Aware that most of the French no longer wanted the authoritarian regime established in
Year VIII and desirous of making the
Bourbons completely forgotten, the Emperor resolved to
liberalise the regime. For this, he had a new constitution drafted by
Benjamin Constant, the Act additional to the constitutions of the Empire, which took up a good part of the liberal elements of the
Charter of 1814. This act overhauled the Parliament, which was divided into two chambers: the
Chamber of Peers, made up of hereditary peers appointed by the Emperor, and the Chamber of Representatives, which was elected by
census suffrage. In the system established by the Charter of 1815, each district or department formed an
electoral college. The college would provide the framework of the elections in France for the next 100 years and continues in a similar fashion today. Each college would table the votes cast by those eligible (any man of 25 years or older who paid taxes). There were 13 further 'special districts' established also known as
arrondissements, between which the votes are equally divided according to a second table. These special districts represented certain areas of high concentrations of essential workers, like merchants, shipowners, bankers, etc. The electoral system therefore left 629 representatives from the departments, and 23 of which were from these special districts. The Additional Act was ratified by
plebiscite on 1 June, but with a very large abstention. In fact, this new constitution did not satisfy many. While royalists were obviously hostile to it, the
Liberals and republicans found it too conservative. The liberal
bourgeoisie criticized the text in particular for not leaving enough initiative to the representatives in legislative matters. ==Results==