[1] The arrival of General Decaen, appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, restored security to the island, and five years later Villèle, who had now accumulated a large fortune, returned to France.

[2] Villèle, who before the promulgation of the charter had written some Observations sur le projet de constitution, opposing it as too democratic in character, naturally took his place on the extreme right with the ultra-royalists.

[2] Under the electoral law of 1817 the Abbé Grégoire, who was popularly supposed to have voted for the death of Louis XVI of France in the convention, was admitted to the Chamber of Deputies.

[2] Although not himself a courtier, he was backed at court by Sosthene de la Rochefoucauld and Madame du Cayla, and in 1822 Louis XVIII gave him the title of count and made him formally prime minister.

He immediately proceeded to muzzle opposition by stringent press laws, and the discovery of minor liberal conspiracies afforded an excuse for further repression.

[2] Meanwhile, he had consolidated the royal power by persuading Louis XVIII to swamp the liberal majority in the upper house by the nomination of twenty-seven new peers; he availed himself of the temporary popularity of the monarchy after the Spanish campaign to summon a new Chamber of Deputies.

This new and obedient legislature, to which only nineteen liberals were returned, made itself into a septennial parliament, thus providing time, it was thought, to restore some part of the ancien regime.