Abstract EN:

The reign of Louis XVIII was a period of intense political activity. Prolonged battles in the name of patriotic and ideological principles profoundly influenced a number of men at the beginning of the nineteenth century. When a constitutional monarchy was established in 1814 some of these individuals, strongly influenced by the period in which they were living, refused to be mere witnesses of events around them and decided instead to throw themselves into a struggle for values they considered fundamental. After twenty-five years of political unrest, they were not willing to accept the peace and order Louis XVIII imposed on them. Instead, these men of action turned to extra-legal (conspiracies) and clandestine (secret societies) activities, fighting violently against the restored political system. Faithful to the legacies of the Revolution and the Counter-revolution, they also fought among themselves, adapting to changing political practices to impose their ideas. This passion led them across Europe, particularly into Italy and Spain. These individuals, who belonged neither to the elite classes of old France nor to those of the new France, found themselves on the margins of society. They represented more a way of thinking than a part of the nation. Their contemporaries did not understand them and historians ignored them. Devoted activists or fanatical militants for Liberty, these subversive adventurers drew the monarchial restoration into the never-ending ideological melting pot which had started in 1789.