comfort, and live rough hard-working lives even while well off and with
large hoards of wealth; but their condition has been wonderfully changed
for the better ever since the Revolution. All this has continued under
the numerous changes that have taken place in the forms of government.




CHAPTER VIII.

FRANCE SINCE THE REVOLUTION.


1. The Restoration.--The Allies left the people of France free to
choose their Government, and they accepted the old royal family, who
were on their borders awaiting a recall. The son of Louis XVI. had
perished in the hands of his jailers, and thus the king's next brother,
_Louis XVIII._, succeeded to the throne, bringing back a large emigrant
following. Things were not settled down, when Napoleon, in the spring of
1815, escaped from Elba. The army welcomed him with delight, and Louis
was forced to flee to Ghent. However, the Allies immediately rose in
arms, and the troops of England and Prussia crushed Napoleon entirely at
Waterloo, on the 18th of June, 1815. He was sent to the lonely rock of
St. Helena, in the Atlantic, whence he could not again return to trouble
the peace of Europe. There he died in 1821. Louis XVIII. was restored,
and a charter was devised by which a limited monarchy was established, a
king at the head, and two chambers--one of peers, the other of
deputies, but with a very narrow franchise. It did not, however, work
amiss; till, after Louis's death in 1824, his brother, _Charles X._,
tried to fall back on the old system. He checked the freedom of the