Napoleon and the Restoration of the Bourbons

The discovery and publication of a lost work by Lord Macaulay is a major event in historiography. The first section of a projected History of France from the Restoration of the Bourbons to the Accession of Louis Philippe was written by Macaulay in 1831, shortly after the July Revolution of 1830, which he had witnessed at first hand in Paris. Although it is a fragment of an uncompleted whole - planned as the prelude to a full description of the events of 1830 - and although there are a few gaps in the surviving material, the text in fact presents a continuous and unified account of Napoleon's regime and the brief restoration of Louis XVIII leading up to the Battle of Waterloo. The work is interesting not only because of its narrative but because it is characteristically interwoven with the author's political theorizing which are given context by the historical events.